Gustave Doré — L’imaginaire au pouvoir — Musée d’Orsay — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 18 → May 11, 2014

Gustave Doré (1832-1883) is without doubt one of the most prodigious artists of the 19th century. At barely fifteen years of age he began a career as a caricaturist and then as a professional illustrator — which brought him international fame — before embracing, like the universal figures of the Renaissance, all areas of creativity: drawing, painting, watercolour, engraving and sculpture.

Doré also applied his immense talent to different genres, from satire to history painting, delivering in turn enormous canvases and more intimate paintings, flamboyant watercolours, virtuoso washes, incisive pen and ink drawings, engravings, fanciful illustrations, as well as Baroque, humorous, monumental and enigmatic sculptures.

As an illustrator, Doré set himself the challenge of the greatest texts. His illustrations for the Bible, Dante, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Perrault, Cervantes, Milton and Shakespeare, as well as his contemporaries, such as Hugo, Balzac, Poe and Tennyson, turned him into a real purveyor of European culture. His multifaceted work thus occupies a special place in contemporary collective imagination: van Gogh, an admirer, drew inspiration from some of his works, the cinema (from Cecil B. DeMille to Terry Gilliam) reaped the rewards of his striking images, and even comic books owe their creation to him.

The first retrospective of Doré’s works in thirty years, the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay reveal all of the aspects of his art.

Curators: Paul Lang, assistant director and chief curator, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Edouard Papet, chief curator, Musée d’Orsay. This exhibition has been produced by the Musée d’Orsay and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in partnership with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.