Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/146

 296 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS GUSTAVE DORE* By Kenyon Cox r (1832-1883) t is now eleven years since Gus- tave Dore" died. He was an officer of the Legion of Honor, had attained considerable wealth, and was probably more widely known than any other artist of his day. His name was a household word in two continents. Yet he died a disappointed and embit- tered man, and is proclaimed by his friends as a neglected and misunderstood genius. He was known the world over as the most astonishingly prolific illustrator of books that has ever lived ; he wished to be known in France as a great painter and a great sculp- tor, and because the artists and critics of France never seriously recognized his claims to this glory, he seems to have become a victim of the mania of persecution, and his naturally sunny nature was over-clouded with moroseness and suspicion. Hailed by some as the emulator and equal of the great names of the Italian Renaissance, and considered a great moral force — a " preacher painter " — by others he has been denounced as " designer in chief to the devil," and described as a man wallowing in all foulness and horror, a sort of demon of frightful power. Both these extreme judgments are English. The late Blanchard Jerrold, an intimate friend and collaborator of the artist, takes the first view. Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Hamerton have taken the second. Dore s own countrymen have never accepted either. Just where, between them, the truth lies, as we see it, we shall endeavor to show in this article. The main facts of Dore s life may be dismissed very briefly. He was born with a caul on January 6, 1832, in the Rue Bleue at Strasbourg, near the Cathe- dral. About 1 84 1 his father removed to Bourg, in the Department of Ain, where he was chief government engineer of the department. These two resi- dences of the young artist are supposed to account for the mastery of Gothic
 * Reprinted by permission, from the " Nation."