Fantasy and Faith : The Art of Gustave Doré 9780300107371, 0300107374

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FANTASY AND FAITH The Art of Gustave Dore

FANTASY AND FAITH

The Art of Gustave Dore

Eric Zafran, editor with Robert Rosenblum and Lisa Small

DAHESH MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN & LONDON

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Copyright © 2007 The Dahesh Museum of Art

Typeset in Garamond by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Designed by Sally Salvesen Index by Indexing Partners Printed in Italy by Conti Tipocolor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zafran, Eric. Fantasy and faith : the art of Gustave Dore / Eric Zafran with Robert Rosenblum and Lisa Small, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-10737-4 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN13 978-0-300-10737-1 1. Dore, Gustave, 1832-1883—Criticism and Interpretation. I. Dore, Gustave, 1832—1883. II. Rosenblum, Robert. III. Small, Lisa. IV. Title. N6853.D64Z34 2003 760'.092—dc22 2005000831

All works illustrated are by Gustave Dore, unless stated otherwise.

Endpapers: The Posers of the World, Salon Studies, for the Journal pour Rire Half title page: Dore photographed by Oscar Rejlander. Frontispiece: Knight Carrying a Lady from the Valley of Monsters, gouache and grisaille on brown paper, the Luis A. Ferre Foundation Inc, Museo de Arte, Ponce 6: Detail ol fig. 81, The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism, 1867-68, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario Page 10: Detail of fig. 113,

Rue de la Vieille Lanteme (Death of Gerard de Nerval), ca. 1855,

lithograph. The Baltimore Museum of Art

Contents

Preface

7

Foreword

8

Editor’s Acknowledgments

11

Chronology

13

Resurrecting Gustave Dore

17

Robert Rosenblum 32

L’Annee Terrible and Political Imagery Lisa Small

64

Dore’s Subjects Eric Zafran RELIGION

64

CARICATURES AND PRINTS

90

LITERARY SUBJECTS

94

PORTRAITS

110

GENRE

113

MYTHOLOGY

118

LANDSCAPES

121

DRAWINGS

128

SCULPTURE

135

“A Strange Genius:” Appreciating Gustave Dore in America

143

Eric Zafran

Checklist of Dore’s Work in North American Collections

177

Notes

191

Bibliographic Abbreviations

205

Index

207

Photographic credits

212

Preface

When the Dahesh Museum of Art began its journey in January of 1995, our founding Board of Trustees decided that every exhibition accepted would be accompanied by some publication, whether concise or elaborate. This particular book is an exception to the rule, for it is being pub¬ lished even without an exhibition in place. Dore, a prolific and passionate artist, has not only captured the wrath of nature and the dramatic intensity of the Scriptures in his canvases, but he has also touched the child’s imagination with novel interpretations in his illustrations—a place where fiction and non-fiction alike appear real.

The

visual impact of an art exhibition may be short-lived, and the time generally spent viewing the art itself may not be enough to get the most out of an exhibition, hence the importance of reading about it more—expanding one’s knowledge through the different interpretations offered by museum experts. Immense efforts, as well as funds, go into such publications, where curators not only pres¬ ent the pertinent facts about the objects themselves, but also investigate, study and interpret the complex themes represented by the featured artworks. Often we find ourselves wondering about the choice of subject matter, places, dates, or circum¬ stances, and frequently the answers are not discovered within painted symbols, but are embedded in letters from the artist to a friend, or his own diary, an account by a contemporary acquaintance, or in literature, history books, and many other sources. At times, that voice of the factual past is not discernible in a canvas, but is rather amplified by the hand of a diligent museum researcher, who paves for us the way to understanding colorful, yet often obscure, compositions. My personal fascination with illustrations accompanying a text started in childhood, when I rou¬ tinely saved pocket money to buy the next volume of an illustrated French literary series.

I often

found myself dreaming before an image, that powerful and captivating summary of a whole chapter, comparing it to the text and reflecting on the differences. The text gave birth to images, which in turn interpreted the vision of the author—a dynamic dialogue between pen and brush! For a child, those books are treasures of the imagination. As Thomas Carlyle wrote: “In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.” When an exhibition itself is ultimately dismantled and the lights turned off, a publication in hand remains a faithful reminder of the beauty that once passed through a museum’s halls. In this spirit, I would like to dedicate this publication and, hopefully, a future Dore exhibition, to the guru of nineteenth-century art par excellence, the late Dr. Robert Rosenblum, who told me back in 1987, when the Dahesh Museum was chartered, that it is a museum that belongs in the twenty-first century. To an exceptional scholar and great teacher, may he find Beauty wherever his soul wanders.

Amira Zahid Trustee, Dahesh Museum of Art

Foreword

The story of this book’s development might well be compared to a long journey that, although filled with unexpected delays and detours, finally arrived in an entirely different, but still wonderful place. The project originated with Dr. Eric Zafran, who first became aware of Gustave Dore’s significance in the 1970s, when he worked at the Chrysler Museum with its magnificent painting, The Neophyte. Later, at the Walters Art Gallery, as it was then called, Dr. Zafran helped bring into the collection the artist’s equally grand Scottish Landscape.

His idea of presenting an exhibition of Dore’s works from

American collections was supported first at the Chrysler Museum by Bill Hennessy and Jeff Harrison, as well as by a pledge from the National Endowment for the Arts. When the exhibition could not be presented at the Chrysler, the project found a home at the Dahesh Museum of Art, where it was encouraged by former Directors J. David Farmer and Peter Trippi, the latter succeeding in securing further financial support from the New York State Council on the Arts. Ultimately, the Dore exhibition proved impossible to arrange, but Sally Salvesen of Yale University Press in London continued to believe in the project and it is thanks to her and her colleagues that you hold this book in your hands.

Fantasy and Faith: The Art of Gustave Dore is the first major scholarly work on the artist in English in more than twenty-five years. Focusing on works in North American collections, it will reveal Dore’s inventiveness and virtuosity in a wide range of media. Although he had no true students or followers in his own lifetime, the fruits of his prodigious visual imagination, many reproduced in the following pages, went on to influence some of the titans of early twentieth-century popular culture, including Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney. Even today, Dore’s legacy continues to assert itself in the realm of comic books and graphic novels. In keeping with the Dahesh Museum of Art’s mission to offer fresh appraisals of nineteenth-century Europe’s unfairly neglected artists, this long-awaited publication will help restore Dore’s well-deserved reputation as one of the era’s masters. I am grateful to the many people in museums, libraries, and private homes around the world who provided the Dahesh Museum of Art with images for this book, as well as to the wonderful interns who helped gather and organize them: Catherine Donnellier, Naomi Menahem, Tiffany Pak, and Sarah Thomas.

I would like to thank Henry Krawitz, and also Eric G. Carlson, whose

kind gift enriched the Dahesh Museum’s Dore holdings.

For his generosity, hospitality, and vast

stores of knowledge I owe great thanks to Dan Malan, scholar, author, collector, raconteur, and expert on all things Dore.

My colleagues at the Dahesh Museum (current and former) were, as

always, of tremendous help with this project at every stage, particularly Peter Trippi, Flora Kaplan, Paula Webster, and Stephen Edidin.

I also want to express my gratitude to Amira Zahid and the

entire Board of Trustees of the Dahesh Museum of Art, without whose key support this book would not have been possible.

8

The Dahesh Museum of Art is profoundly grateful to the late professor Robert Rosenblum, who contributed to this book what turned out to be, most unfortunately, one of his last published essays. Like everything he wrote, it is a flawless blend of erudition, clarity, and insight. I am deeply honored to have an essay of mine appear next to his. Finally, I’d like to thank Eric Zafran for his tireless work on this project through all of its many stages. His unerring scholarship—apparent in the essay and subject sections of this book—along with his belief in Gustave Dore’s importance and universal appeal, guided this book’s realization at every stage. Lisa Small Associate Curator Dahesh Museum of Art

9

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Editors Acknowledgments

Many individuals have helped this project, providing information, photographs and encouragement, and I would particularly like to thank Gerald Ackerman, Sam Clapp, Marie-Jeanne Geyer, Nadine Lehni, Dan Malan, Victor Mehrles, Polly Sartori, Robert Simon, Bob Tomlinson, and Ko Tokikuni. I am also most grateful to my one-time professor at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, the late Robert Rosenblum, for his continuing support for research into the nether cor¬ ners of the nineteenth century and his ready willingness to contribute such an insightful essay on Dore’s place in European art. It was he who wrote consolingly when the exhibition was cancelled, “We all know that exhibitions are like fireworks, but books are enduring!” My thanks to the dedicated and helpful staffs of the Frick Art Reference Library, the Getty Research Center, and the Documentation of the Musee d’Orsay. In addition I want to thank the fol¬ lowing curators, librarians, registrars, scholars, collectors, and dealers who have also contributed information: Lady Jane Abdy, Seth Armitage, Linda Ashton, Ronni Baer, Bernard Barryte, Kit Basquin, Frances Beatty, Sylvain Bellenger, Kate Bergeron, James Bergquist, Suzanne Boorsh, Amanda Bowen, Pete Bowron, Ann Brandwein, Christine Braun, Tobi Bruce, Patrick Shaw Cable, Anne Caiger, Marietta Cambareri, Eric Carlson, Mark Cattanach, Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Jay A. Clarke, Amy Clemmons, Adina Cohen, Christina Corsiglia, Elbe Dawkins, Aaron H. DeGroft, Laure de Margerie, June de Phillips, Louise Dompierre, James Draper, Claudia Einecke, Melissa Falkner, Richard Feigen, Jay Fisher, Carter Foster, Jim Ganz, Ivan Gaskell, Marc S. Gerstein, Laura M. Giles, Margaret Glover, Pat Gomez, Michael Goodison, Meg Grasselli, Gloria Groom, Ann Guite, Beth Guynn, Mark Henderson, Rena Hoisington, Lise Hosein, Linda Izzo, Stanley Johnson, William Johnston, Joanna Karlgaard, Robert Kashey, Sara Kay, Ian Kennedy, George Keyes,

Sarah B.

Kianovsky, Mimi Kilgore, Michael Komanecky, Victor Koshkin-Youritzin, Diane Larson, Stephen Lash, Cheryl Leibold, Christophe Leribault, Bruce Livie, Shirley J. Madill, Aimee Marcereau, Hope Mayo, Susan Folds McCullagh, DeCourcy McIntosh, Joan Michelman, Peter Morrin,

Patrick

Murphy, Peter Nahum, Larry Nichols, John Nolan, Patrick Noon, Jeannine O’Grody, David Ording, Lynn Orr, Benedicte Ottinger, David T. Owsley, Michael Parke-Taylor, Carolyn Peter, Sue Reed, Pierre-Lin

Renie, Andrew Robison,

Lisa Parrott Rolfe,

Cynthia Roman,

Linda Roth,

Bart

Ryckbosch, Kevin Saletino, Alan E. Salz, Frederick Schab, Lisa Schiller, Annette Schlagenhauff, Michael Schlossberg, Hiromi Shiba, Margaret Shufeldt, Joel Smith, Joe Smoke, Stephen Spiro, Eric Stancliff, Timothy Standring, Bill Staples, Perrin Stein, Joey Tannenbaum, Betsy Thomas, Jennifer Tonkovich, Richard Townsend, Mary Villadsen, Roberta Waddell, Evelyn Walker, Stephanie Weil, Gabriel P. Weisberg, Betsy Weisman, Ed Wilson, Elizabeth Wyckoff, Hiroo Yasui, Constance and David Yates, Georgia L. Young, Henry and Martin Zimet. Eric Zafran

ii

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