DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36582#0030
4
THE DO RE GALLERY.
are so many sources of that feeling of amazement which fills the mind when once it
has fallen beneath the spell of this magician. Fecundity alone is an evidence of power;
but when we find enormous productiveness associated with an equal wealth of imaginative
insight—with fancy as various in its forms as Ariel at the bidding of Prospero, and
with manipulative skill that exhausts the technicalities of art to describe it—the sense
of wonder is excited to its highest, and we are led to inquire how this man obtained
his privilege of entering so many grand and lovely regions, and of reflecting them, as
by an enchanted mirror, on the page he touches. M. Dore has already associated
his genius with Dante, with Milton, with Cervantes, with Tennyson, with La Fontaine,
with the Old and New Testaments, with the terrible legend of the Wandering Jew,
with the grotesque extravagances of Munchausen, with the quaint drolleries of Balzac,
and with a hundred other creations, less remarkable in themselves, though perhaps
hardly so in their power of bringing out his finest gifts. He threatens, apparently, to
take the whole field of literature to himself, and future artists will ask what remains for
them to conquer.
Twelve or thirteen years ago, Gustave Dore was scarcely known in England. He
had already made something of a name in France, but even there his reputation was
not great, and beyond the bounds of his native country he was almost an undiscovered
genius. In the course of the year 1857, however, a translation from the French was
published in London, accompanied by the original illustrations of Dore. It was
a chivalric romance, based on an early Provencal poem, called “ Jaufry the Knight
and the Fair Brunissende.” The story abounded in incidents peculiarly fitted to bring
out the most striking and characteristic elements of Dore’s faculty : wild forests and
gloomy valleys, black tarns in mountain hollows, scenes of beautiful or of wicked
enchantment, dwarfs with an evil leer, making horrible the shades of ghostly twilight,
knights in full caparison of battle, the vaporous brightness of enchanted towers, and
pageants of the courts of faery. This was the book which first made M. Dore known
in England, and it set people talking of the artist who could furnish such strange
and weird drawings in illustration of a work not strikingly above the average of
romantic tales. It was not then known that this daring young genius was
contemplating, or actually producing, illustrations of the leading poets and romancers of
Europe, and that his name would speedily be hailed throughout the civilised world as
the most successful book-illustrator of the day. The Dante series was that which
placed Dore in the front rank of art, and proved that he was not merely a
clever designer on the wood, but a draughtsman with many of the highest qualifications
of the painter. No one, indeed, has ever given to wood-engravings such a singularly
pictorial character. He rivals mezzotint itself in the splendid depth and richness of
his glooms; he leaves copper-plate and steel engravings behind in the extraordinary
variety of his sunlight and moonlight effects ; his chiar -oscuro has often the tender touch
THE DO RE GALLERY.
are so many sources of that feeling of amazement which fills the mind when once it
has fallen beneath the spell of this magician. Fecundity alone is an evidence of power;
but when we find enormous productiveness associated with an equal wealth of imaginative
insight—with fancy as various in its forms as Ariel at the bidding of Prospero, and
with manipulative skill that exhausts the technicalities of art to describe it—the sense
of wonder is excited to its highest, and we are led to inquire how this man obtained
his privilege of entering so many grand and lovely regions, and of reflecting them, as
by an enchanted mirror, on the page he touches. M. Dore has already associated
his genius with Dante, with Milton, with Cervantes, with Tennyson, with La Fontaine,
with the Old and New Testaments, with the terrible legend of the Wandering Jew,
with the grotesque extravagances of Munchausen, with the quaint drolleries of Balzac,
and with a hundred other creations, less remarkable in themselves, though perhaps
hardly so in their power of bringing out his finest gifts. He threatens, apparently, to
take the whole field of literature to himself, and future artists will ask what remains for
them to conquer.
Twelve or thirteen years ago, Gustave Dore was scarcely known in England. He
had already made something of a name in France, but even there his reputation was
not great, and beyond the bounds of his native country he was almost an undiscovered
genius. In the course of the year 1857, however, a translation from the French was
published in London, accompanied by the original illustrations of Dore. It was
a chivalric romance, based on an early Provencal poem, called “ Jaufry the Knight
and the Fair Brunissende.” The story abounded in incidents peculiarly fitted to bring
out the most striking and characteristic elements of Dore’s faculty : wild forests and
gloomy valleys, black tarns in mountain hollows, scenes of beautiful or of wicked
enchantment, dwarfs with an evil leer, making horrible the shades of ghostly twilight,
knights in full caparison of battle, the vaporous brightness of enchanted towers, and
pageants of the courts of faery. This was the book which first made M. Dore known
in England, and it set people talking of the artist who could furnish such strange
and weird drawings in illustration of a work not strikingly above the average of
romantic tales. It was not then known that this daring young genius was
contemplating, or actually producing, illustrations of the leading poets and romancers of
Europe, and that his name would speedily be hailed throughout the civilised world as
the most successful book-illustrator of the day. The Dante series was that which
placed Dore in the front rank of art, and proved that he was not merely a
clever designer on the wood, but a draughtsman with many of the highest qualifications
of the painter. No one, indeed, has ever given to wood-engravings such a singularly
pictorial character. He rivals mezzotint itself in the splendid depth and richness of
his glooms; he leaves copper-plate and steel engravings behind in the extraordinary
variety of his sunlight and moonlight effects ; his chiar -oscuro has often the tender touch