Universitätsbibliothek HeidelbergUniversitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
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Ollier, Edmund; Doré, Gustave [Editor]
The Doré Gallery: containing two hundred and fifty beautiful engravings, selected from the Doré Bible, Milton, Dante's Inferno, Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso, Atala, Fontaine, Fairy Realm, Don Quixote, Baron Munchhausen, Croquemitaine, &c. &c. — London, New York, 1870

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36582#0046
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THE DO RE GALLERY.

The next design gives a nearer view of the garden, and in some of the following pictures
Adam and Eve are seen alone, or in the society of angels. Among the best of the
illustrations are those which depict the creation of the world. The separation of the
waters as, pouring between the newly-risen rocks and mountains, they flow towards the
great bed of the ocean, is most felicitously rendered : the soft, dark, fluent outlines of
the torrents, and the mist of steam spreading over the whole composition, admirably
embody the suggestions of the text. Equally good is the generation of the fishes and
the birds ; and in the drawing illustrating the passage—
“ Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores
Their brood as numerous hatch,”
the effect of fresh young sunshine, and swarming winged life, is very noticeable. The
arising of the seventh evening in Eden is perhaps the most beautiful landscape in the
book. The beasts of the field, in their first innocence and bloodless fraternity, are
couched in a grassy meadow, beneath vast shadowy trees, and at the back of the picture
a large yellow moon glimmers between thin streaks of cloud, casting a slumberous light
over earth and sky. A view of wild grandeur, tumultuous with rocks and foamy waters,
is that in which Satan stands contemplating the point at which the river Tigris, according
to the ancient legend, sinks underground “ at the foot of Paradise,” to rise up again
within the happy boundary, in the form of a fountain. The wily approach of the Serpent
up a shady walk, at the end of which Adam and Eve sit beneath bowers of drooping
foliage, is very intense in its contrast of trusting innocence and malevolent design and
the picture in which the primitive man and woman, after having eaten of the apple,
give way to transports of grief, is full of grand forest glooms, in keeping with the
sentiment of the piece. The enormous tree-trunk against which Adam is leaning is
drawn with great force and mastery, and the two figures are well conceived. T he
expulsion from Paradise is a little theatrical; but the illustrations of Biblical history in
connection with the prophetic visions of Adam are good, especially that of Moses on
Mount Sinai with the tables of the law—a magnificent prospect of barren, dusky land,
and cloudy sky. There are several reasons why it is surprising that M. Dord should
have been so successful in his illustrations to “ Paradise Lost.” A Frenchman seldom
entirely sympathises with an Englishman, or with the creations of English genius.
M. Dore might have been in a measure chilled by the Puritanism of Milton, or depressed
by the austerity of his verse, or checked by an imperfect acquaintance with the language
of his original. It may, indeed, be thought by some that he has entered more fully into the
spirit of the Catholic Italian than into that of the Protestant Englishman; but it is certain
that he has worthily interpreted some of the finest points in the latter. It should also be
borne in mind that M. Dore, in illustrating Milton after Dante, was forced to go over
similar, though certainly not identical, ground. Still, the illustrations to “ Paradise Lost,”
 
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