Gustave Doré was a French artist and one of the most prolific and successful illustrators of the late 19th century, whose vivacious and eccentric fantasy created immense, dreamlike scenes, extensively, followed by Romantic academicians. He was an accomplished painter, but also an engraver, watercolourist, and sculptor who worked primarily with wood engraving. Moreover, however, Gustave Doré is celebrated for his extraordinary talents as an illustrator with an unrestrained imagination, the inventor of places and fantastic beings, a pioneer of comics and a source of inspiration for brilliant filmmakers. Doré's tremendous skill is also involved in various genres, from satire to history. He gave, in turn, enormous paintings and more intimate canvasses, …show more content…
Employing in excess of 40 woodcutters, he produced more than 90 illustrated books. Among his best was an issue of the ‘Oeuvres de Rabelais’ (1854), ‘Les Contes drolatiques of Balzac’ (1855), ‘The Inferno of Dante’ (1861), and the Bible (1866). In the 1860s, Doré illustrated a French edition of ‘Cervantes's Don Quixote’, with his portrayals of a knight and his squire, Sancho Panza, have become so significant that they have influenced consequent readers, artists, and also, stage and film directors' ideas of the physical appearances of these two characters. As Doré's illustrations for the Bible (1866) were a remarkable success, in 1867, Doré held a major exhibition of his works in London. This exhibition subsequently led to the foundations of the Doré Gallery in Bond Street, London. Doré also illustrated a larger edition of Edgar Allan Poe's ‘The Raven’, an effort that earned him 30,000 francs from the publisher Harper & Brothers in 1883. Doré's later work involved illustrations for new editions of the ‘Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Milton's Paradise Lost’, ‘Tennyson's Idylls of the King’, ‘The Works of Thomas Hood’, and ‘The Divine