DORÉ, PAUL-GUSTAVE. - French engraver, painter, and sculptor, b. at Strasbourg on 6 Jan. 1832, d. at Paris on 23 Jan. 1883.
His truly exceptional gifts as a draughtsman and, above all, his ability to illustrate, in strongly emphasized realistic tones, real events, fantastic scenes, and at times compositions of even transcendental content, won him immense fame in his day. In some of his works, such as the drawings for Balzac’s Contes drôlatiques (1885) or those illustrating the adventures of Rabelais, D. also gave free rein to a vein of irony that reached the point of satire; the same may be said of the illustrations for Don Chisciotte (1865). Nevertheless, the most famous works of D.’s immense output are the illustrations for the Divina Commedia (1861) and those for the Bible published by him in 1864. He was already a celebrated artist when, around 1870, D. devoted himself almost entirely first to painting and then also to sculpture, without, however, achieving in those fields the successes he had attained in that of illustration. Among his paintings may be mentioned the Neofita and the Cristo che lascia il pretorio (London, in the G. D. Gallery), and among his sculptures the monument to Dumas père (1882), erected in Paris in 1884.