Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/56



Paul Gustave Doré was born at Strasburg in the month of January 1832. At an early age he was taken to Paris by his father, and there his education was completed. When quite a boy, he contributed to the 'Journal pour Rire' little comic sketches. Of his pictures, among the first to attract the attention of connoisseurs were 'La Bataille d'Alma,' exhibited in 1855, and 'La Bataille d'Inkermann,' exhibited in 1857.

M. Doré's works are well known in this country, where they have been exhibited both as contributions to exhibitions of pictures by various artists, and also a number of his oil pictures forming a gallery by themselves.

M. Doré has turned his great powers to drawings on the wood; and, as an illustrator of books of imagination by the great authors, is almost unrivalled in popularity. His pictorial interpretations of Rabelais, of Balzac's wild 'Contes Didactiques,' and of that grand work of fiction, 'The Wandering Jew,' are well known and deservedly admired for their originality and realisation of the author's ideal; though the artist's illustrations to the 'Divina Commedia' of Dante, to Cervantes' perennial 'Don Quixote,' to Milton, and to the Holy Bible, are better known in this country.

Though French by birth, M. Doré is almost an Englishman by adoption, and is perfectly conversant with English places and people. He has drawn a history of the metropolis under the title of 'London: a Pilgrimage.'

M. Doré received, on 15th of August 1861, the decoration of the Cross of the Legion of Honour.

Whatever branch of his art his fame in his own country may ultimately rest upon, here the name of Gustave Doré will always be associated in the minds of those who were among the first to recognise his great talent, and