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Painting

Gustave Dore, "Young Beggar," Pencil & Watercolor.

Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré

497 1000 Lines & Marks

``I have been told for a long time that painting would make me despair of life.``

Gustave Dore,”The Hare and the Frogs.” Engraving, 1868.
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Left side: “Paolo and Francesca da Rimini.” Oil on canvas. | Right side: “The Inferno, Canto 5.” Etching.

Doré was born in Strasbourg on 6 January 1832. By age five, he was a prodigy troublemaker, playing pranks that were mature beyond his years. Seven years later, he began carving in cement. At the age of fifteen Doré began his career working as a caricaturist for the French paper Le Journal pour rire, and subsequently went on to win commissions to depict scenes from books by Rabelais, Balzac, Milton and Dante.

In 1853, Doré was asked to illustrate the works of Lord Byron. This commission was followed by additional work for British publishers, including a new illustrated English Bible. In 1856 he produced twelve folio-size illustrations of The Legend of The Wandering Jew for a short poem which Pierre-Jean de Ranger had derived from a novel of Eugène Sue of 1845.

In the 1860s he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and his depictions of the knight and his squire, Sancho Panza, have become so famous that they have influenced subsequent readers, artists, and stage and film directors’ ideas of the physical “look” of the two characters. Doré also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, an endeavor that earned him 30,000 francs from publisher Harper & Brothers in 1883. (wiki)

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 Gustave Doré, “The Martyrdom of the Holy Innocents,” 1868.

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Doré’s illustrations for the English Bible (1866) were a great success, and in 1867 Doré had a major exhibition of his work in London. This exhibition led to the foundation of the Doré Gallery in Bond Street, London. In 1869, Blanchard Jerrold, the son of Douglas William Jerrold, suggested that they work together to produce a comprehensive portrait of London. Jerrold had obtained the idea from The Microcosm of London produced by Rudolph Ackermann, William Pyne, and Thomas Rowlandson in 1808. Doré signed a five-year contract with the publishers Grant & Co that involved his staying in London for three months a year, and he received the vast sum of £10,000 a year for the project. Doré was mainly celebrated for his paintings in his day. His paintings remain world-renowned, but his woodcuts and engravings, like those he did for Jerrold, are where he really excelled as an artist with an individual vision.

The completed book, London: A Pilgrimage, with 180 engravings, was published in 1872. It enjoyed commercial and popular success, but the work was disliked by many contemporary critics. Some of these critics were concerned with the fact that Doré appeared to focus on the poverty that existed in parts of London. Doré was accused by The Art Journal of “inventing rather than copying.” The Westminster Review claimed that “Doré gives us sketches in which the commonest, the vulgarest external features are set down.” The book was a financial success, however, and Doré received commissions from other British publishers.

Doré’s later work included illustrations for new editions of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, The Works of Thomas Hood, and The Divine Comedy. Doré’s work also appeared in the weekly newspaper The Illustrated London News.

Doré never married and, following the death of his father in 1849, he continued to live with his mother, illustrating books until his death in Paris following a short illness. The city’s Père Lachaise Cemetery contains his grave. The government of France made him a Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur in 1861. (wiki)

 Gustave Doré (1832-1883): Master of Imagination
 Gustave Dore, “The Descent Of The Spirit.”
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Top: “The Neophyte.” Oil on canvas. | Bottom: “The Neophyte.” Pencil.
Hieronymus Bosch, "The seven deadly sins and the four last things."

Hieronymus Bosch

1080 921 Lines & Marks

Hieronymus Bosch (1450 – 1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter. His work is known for its fantastic imagery, detailed landscapes, and illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell…

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Hieronymus Bosch, “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”

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Bosch painted in a comparatively sketchy manner, contrasting with the traditional Flemish style of painting in which the smooth surface—achieved by the application of multiple transparent glazes—conceals the brushwork. Bosch’s paintings with their rough surfaces, so called impasto painting, differed from the tradition of the great Netherlandish painters of the end of the 15th, and beginning of the 16th centuries, who wished to hide the work done and so suggest their paintings as more nearly divine creations. (wiki)

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Right side: Painting, Detail, “Garden of Earthly delights”  |  Left side: Drawing, “The Tree man.”
Hieronymus Bosch, “The seven deadly sins and the four last things.”
Documentary: Hieronymus Bosch with Brian Sewell
Copyright Information

The images on this page are not authored by Lines & Marks. They are shared under “fair use” for non-profit, educational and reference purposes, and may be subject to copyright. If for any reason this status is contested, notify us and we will remove the image(s) immediately. All other, © Lines & Marks, 2015.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel,"Der Brand von Moskau, 1812/1813"

Karl Friedrich Schinkel

762 571 Lines & Marks

``First delight, then instruct.``

Karl Friedrich Schinkel,”Allegorie auf Beuth, den Pegasus reitend,” 1837. Watercolor. 37,4 x 35,9 cm

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (13 March 1781 – 9 October 1841) was a Prussian architect, city planner, and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schinkel was one of the most prominent architects of Germany and designed both neoclassical and neogothic buildings. Schinkel’s style, in his most productive period, is defined by a turn to Greek rather than Imperial Roman architecture, an attempt to turn away from the style that was linked to the recent French occupiers. (Thus, he is a noted proponent of the Greek Revival.) His most famous extant buildings are found in and around Berlin. (wiki)

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``use the best possible materials and reveal the qualities of those materials and the craftmanship of their assembly.``

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Later, Schinkel moved away from classicism altogether, embracing the Neo-Gothic in his Friedrichswerder Church (1824–1831). Schinkel’s Bauakademie (1832–1836), his most innovative building, eschewed historicist conventions and seemed to point the way to a clean-lined “modernist” architecture that would become prominent in Germany only toward the beginning of the 20th century. (wiki)

 Karl Friederich Schinkel, “The Gate in the Rocks,” 1818. Oil on canvas. 29.1 x 18.9 in
Copyright Information

The images on this page are not authored by Lines & Marks. They are shared under “fair use” for non-profit, educational and reference purposes, and may be subject to copyright. If for any reason this status is contested, notify us and we will remove the image(s) immediately. All other, © Lines & Marks, 2015.

Albrecht Dürer, "Young Hare." (1502)

Albrecht Durer

800 884 Lines & Marks

``And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.``

“A supremely gifted and versatile German artist of the Renaissance period, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was born in the Franconian city of Nuremberg, one of the strongest artistic and commercial centers in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He was a brilliant painter, draftsman, and writer, though his first and probably greatest artistic impact was in the medium of printmaking…” (From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vincent Van Gogh, The Drawings)

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Vincent van Gogh, "Wheat Field with Cypresses"

Vincent Van Gogh

1080 822 Lines & Marks

``Drawing is the root of everything.``

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“Generally overshadowed by the fame and familiarity of his paintings, Vincent van Gogh’s more than 1,100 drawings remain comparatively unknown, although they are among his most ingenious and striking creations. Van Gogh engaged drawing and painting in a rich dialogue, which enabled him to fully realize the creative potential of both means of expression.

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