Gustave Doré, an Alsatian and a multi-artist, who had as short a life as his work was great, was born on January 6, 1832. January 6 is the Epiphany, indeed. And so I hope you will find the lucky charm in your slice of the king cake (as a tradition in France, we eat this very specific cake on that day). But as you will understand from the title of this article, that is not my topic here. On January 6, 1832, Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré was born, better known in short version as Gustave Doré. On this occasion, let’s take a quick look at him.

Indeed, we have changed a lot of things regarding streets’ names and numbers. Go and take a look at the articles by our other Gustave on Strasbourg’s streets’ names, you should get the begining of an answer about it 😉

Okay, that was just to mess with you a bit, and also to mention gratuitously that we can take you there with our guided tours. It’s for SEO, Google likes it so. So go on and click, it doesn’t hurt, and you may even join our Free Tours, it doesn’t hurt either, I promise!

To put it in a nutshell, you will see that despite his talent, Gustave never received the honors he desired for his painting. That said, his first work was a hen he painted green and which terrorized the city! For the record, you will find at the end of the article a transcription of what Mr. Doré himself had to say about that story.

Despite the hen incident, little Gustave was very talented for drawing. At the age of 5, he had already produced his first caricatures, and in 1845 (age 13) his first drawings were lithographed by a printer. Two years later, while he was passing through Paris with his parents, he presented some drawings to the publisher Charles Philipon. So it was that his first album of satirical lithographs was published, “The Labours of Hercules”, when he was only 15. You’ll admit that this could be enough for a teenager to get big-headed! When his father died in 1849, the still very young Gustave had to provide for his mother and two brothers. He therefore continued his work as an illustrator and published several albums. It’s the start of his career!

Illustration and glory

Gustave Doré’s career probably ended too soon: he died at the age of 51, on January 23, 1883. But during his short life, he was not idle. There are more than 10,000 pieces to his work. Illustrations, drawings, paintings, engravings and sculptures, and it is probably for his illustrations that he is best known. Remember for instance the ones he did for Perrault’s tales. But he opened the doors to glory in 1854 by illustrating the works of Rabelais. The following year, he tackled on Balzac and his golden age extended as briefly as his life, roughly between 1861 and 1866. It was during that time that he published his illustrations of Dante’s Inferno, of Cervantes’ Don Quixote or of the Holy Bible. That said, he also worked on other litterary monuments such as Jean de La Fontaine, William Shakespeare, Edgar Poe, and so on!

During the Paris Commune in 1871, he retired to Versailles and continued to paint. He said “I illustrate today to pay for my colours and my brushes. I was born a painter…”. He continued to paint, seeking the same recognition he had for illustration, but would not get it in his lifetime.

You can find some images and explanations on the Cinémathèque website.
It would seem also that Mylène Farmer was inspired by the artist for the staging of her 2009 tour, and I dare not believe that his great-great-grand-nephew Julien Doré (a French singer) never drew inspiration from his distant relative!

The green hen

Alright, a promise is a promise! Let Gustave himself tell you about the episode of the green hen. His words have been transcribed in The life and works of Gustave Doré, from the memories of his family, his friends and the author: Blanche Roosevelt (1887).

I enjoyed contemplating my work for a while, then I went back to bed to fix a sleepless night. Two or three hours later, I was awakened with a start by an unusual noise, cries, moans. Peasants and good women have gathered in front of the house; some raise their arms to the sky, some weep, others express deep despair and awe by disorderly gestures . And, in the middle of them, my hen! When it starts to come forward, they move away in terror. I understand everything then. I remember a legend from the country where the green hen plays a terrible role; when it appears, all plagues threaten the village: it is the loss of harvests, the plague in the stables, the epidemic in the houses. This is why the village went into a riot. A woman falls, seized with a nervous breakdown. I do not hesitate. I run to find the master of the house and I make him a full confession. It took my father’s friend over an hour to make the peasants understand that this hen was by no means sent by a bad angel, and that it was quite simply my first painted work. He only succeeded by showing the horribly flattened Veronese green tube.”

Personally, I laughed a lot while reading this passage!

I hope you learned a little about this famous Alsatian, born on January 6. I leave you now with a last link to the Wikiart site which lists in images a small part of Mr Doré’s works  (759 of them still), enjoy! ????

And if you visit the Père-Lachaise cemetery, come and see his grave, death is not just about Jim Morrison… I mean life of course!