Gustave Doré

La nuit de Noël (detail)
© Photo RMN

courtesy Musée d'Orsay

Lac prs d'Ischl, 1876

watercolor, gouache and charcoal over traces of pen and ink on paper
17 x 12.3/8 in. (45.1 x 31.5 cm.)

Gustave Doré - 2 views 'round Lac Léman

View of St. Gingolph

signed, inscribed and dated 'G. Doré/ St.Gingolph 1881'
watercolor, goauche and pencil on paper
14 3/8 x 20 15/16 (36.5 x 53.3cm)St. Gingolph today

View of Chillon Chateau

signé et daté 'G Doré 1874'
watercolour, pencil and gouache on paper
32.1 x 48.1 cm. (12 5/8 x 19 in.)
http://www.chillon.ch/en/

Figures in a park - Gustave Doré

Figures in a park

charcoal, wash and bodycolour
35.6 x 25.4 cm. (14 x 10 in.)

Gustave Doré - Self-portrait and the illustration, White Rose

More works by Gustave Doré from - ArtMagick

White Rose

Illustration to Dante's Divine Comedy, Paradiso - Plate 34
Dante and Beatrice and the Heavenly Host of Angels
(Canto 31: The Saintly Throng in the Form of a Rose)

More illustrations by Gustave Doré from - Art Passions
And from Melissa Yeo at the blog, Drawing at Duke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9

Gustave Doré (French, 1832–1883)

Summer

"Doré, best known for illustrations of the Bible and Dante's 'Divine Comedy', painted many landscapes of Switzerland, Scotland, and France, but this work is unique. A slice of nature from a bug's-eye view, it seems to be an allegory of rejuvenation and the transience of life. Hollyhocks, morning-glories, dandelions, daisies, thistles, and other weeds battle for survival, and butterflies and dragonflies feed on them. The scythe, a traditional symbol of death, lies rusting in the foreground, and in contrast to the luxuriance of nature, a ruined building is moldering in the background."

Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Titania - Gustave Doré

"... Doré heightens the ethereal mood, with gauzy washes of pale color depicting the miniature fairy court that floats and flutters about Titania as she rests on her bower of woodbine. Swirling in circles the fairy ring's formation is cleverly echoed by the circular shape of the watercolors themselves. The pendant work, set deeper in the wood, consists of more heavily applied tones of violets, blues and yellows, creating a drowsy, dreamy effect to the scene, in which a central fairy blows a pair of trumpets made of flowers. Together, these works seem to illustrate the moment in the play's Scene II Act II where "There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/ Lull'd in the flowers with dances and delight."

"Gustave Doré was particularly fascinated with English literature. Since moving to London in 1866 to open a gallery of his works, the artist rediscovered British Romantic authors and other works of the literary canon via newly edited, republished editions. Throughout the following decade, Doré became a leading illustrator for these editions, and among his chief projects were Milton's 'Paradise Lost', Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King' and the works of Lord Byron and Charles Dickens. Above all, as Doré remarked, the "intention is to make Shakespeare my masterpiece” (La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Doré, Paris, 1983, p. 188, translated from the French). Yet the project never reached its full completion."
From the catalogue note.

24 3/4 by 31 1/4 in. / 63 by 79.5 cm
Watercolor
Each stamped with the artist's studio stamp.
Provenance:
Artist's Studio; sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 10-15, 1885.

Gustave Doré and a Thomas Hood poem

A little fairy comes at night,
Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown,
With silver spots upon her wings,
And from the moon she flutters down.

She has a little silver wand,
And when a good child goes to bed
She waves her wand from right to left,
And makes a circle round its head.

And then it dreams of pleasant things,
Of fountains filled with fairy fish,
And trees that bear delicious fruit,
And bow their branches at a wish;


Of arbors filled with dainty scents
From lovely flowers that never fade;
Bright flies that glitter in the sun,
And glow-worms shining in the shade.

And talking birds with gifted tongues,
For singing songs and telling tales,
And pretty dwarfs to show the way
Through fairy hills and fairy dales. ...

1. Fairy School, Queen Mab (France, c.1870)
Pencil heightened with white
courtesy Leicester Galleries and ArtMagick

2. Illustration for the poem, Queen Mab. (excerpt above)
Engraved by W. Ridgway.
From the 1870 first edition of Poems by Thomas Hood.
Published in London by Moxon, Son & Co.
The book included nine engravings by Gustave Doré.
More about Thomas Hood.
And from Poets' Grave.