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Artist or Maker: Gustave Doré (French, 1832-1883)

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Provenance: Collection of Dr. Coleman and Shirley Mopper, Missouri.

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Notes: Gustave Doré's talent as a painter is often overlooked because of his brilliance as an illustrator. His renown in his own time came from his remarkable images drawn to accompany the work of Milton, Dante, Coleridge, Rabelais and Shakespeare as well as the satirical images that chronicled daily life in London at the time. The Doré Bible, as stated in the previous entry, was one of the most ubiquitously published works in history.

For the artist himself, however, illustration was secondary to painting. 'I illustrate just to pay for my paint brushes'. (J. Richardson, Gustave Doré: A Biography, London, 1980, p. 78). To his everlasting regret, Doré never received the recognition he craved as a painter during his lifetime.

Doré's interest in landscape was evident throughout his life, and came as a naturally from his love of travel. Through the 1850s and 60s he produced a series of forest and mountain scenes inspired by the places he visited.

Doré's approach to landscape painting is completely descriptive, something that was unusual for the time. Upon first inspection, Mont Blanc could be seen as a successor to the Romantic views of the beginning of the 19th century. However, his landscapes fall outside the confines of any school or movement: he rejects the humility of the Barbizon painters, the militant realism of Courbet, the abstraction of Turner and the radicalism of Impressionism. To Doré the illustrator, the landscape is so powerful and majestic in its own right there is no need for further embellishment. No detail is omitted, and all the drama of the high mountains is conveyed as completely true to life. There is no sign of human presence; this is a landscape that is neither tamed by man nor at one with him.

Doré has been called the peintre-poète of the mountains (A. Renonciat, La vie et l'oeuvre de G. Doré, 1983, p. 256). In Mont Blanc, he not only captures the splendid scenery of the highest mountain range in Europe, but reminds us once again why he was one of the most famous names in 19th century art.

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