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It was at the Cafe de l'Horloge in Paris. Mr. Whistler sat leaning on
his cane, looking off into space, dreamily and wearily.
He roused enough to answer the question: "Dore—Gustave Dore—an
artist? Why, the name sounds familiar! Oh, yes, an illustrator. Ah, now I
understand; but there is a difference between an artist and an
illustrator, you know, my boy. Dore—yes, I knew him—he had bats in his
belfry!"
And Mr. Whistler dismissed the subject by calling for a match, and then
smoked his cigarette in grim silence, blowing the smoke through his nose.
Not liking a man, it is easy to shelve him with a joke, or to waive his
work with a shrug and toss of the head, but not always will the ghost down
at our bidding.
In the realm of art nothing is more strange than this: genius does not
recognize genius. Still, the word is much abused, and the man who is a
genius to some is never so to others. In defining a genius it is easiest
to work by the rule of elimination and show what he is not.
For instance, neither Reynolds, Landseer nor Meissonier was a genius.
These men were strong, sane, well poised—filled with energy and life.
They were receptive and quick to grasp a suggestion or hint that could be
turned to their advantage—to further the
immediate plans they had in hand. They had ambition and the ability to
concentrate on a thing and do it. Just what they focused their attention
upon was largely a matter of accident. They had in them the capacity for
success—they could have succeeded at anything they undertook, and they
were too sensible to undertake a thing at which they could not succeed.
They always saw light through at the other end.
"I have success tied to the leg of my easel by a blue
ribbon," said Meissonier.
They succeeded by mathematical calculation, and the fame, name and gold
they won was through a conscious laying hold upon the laws that bring
these things to pass.
They chose to paint pictures, and the entire energy of their natures
was concentrated upon this one thing. Practising the art, day after day,
month after month, year after year, they acquired a wonderful facility.
They knew the history of art—its failures, pitfalls and successes. They
knew the human heart—they knew what the people wanted and what they
didn't. They set themselves to supply a demand. And all this keenness,
combined with good taste and tireless energy, would have brought a like
success in any one of a dozen different professions.
And these are the men who give plausibility to that stern half-truth: a
man can succeed in anything he undertakes—it is all a matter of will.
But you can not count Gustave Dore in any such category. He stands
alone: he had no predecessors, and he left no successors. We say that the
artist has his prototype; but every rule has its exception—even this
one.
Gustave Dore drew pictures because he could do nothing else. He never
had a lesson in his life, never drew from a model, could not sketch from
Nature; accepted no one's advice; never retouched or considered his work
after it was done; never cudgeled his brains for a subject; could read a
book by turning the leaves; grasped all knowledge; knew all languages;
found an immediate market for his wares and often earned a thousand
dollars before breakfast; lived fifty years and produced over one hundred
thousand sketches—an average of six a day; made two million dollars by
the labor of his own hands; was knighted, flattered, proclaimed, adored,
lauded, scorned, scoffed, hooted, maligned, and died broken-hearted.
Surely you can not dispose of a man like this with a "bon
mot"!
Comets may be good or ill, but wise men nevertheless make note of them,
and the fact that they once flashed their blinding light upon us must live
in the history of things that were.
An Alsatian by birth, and a Parisian by environment, Dore is spoken of
as of the French School, but if ever an artist belonged to no
"school" it was Gustave Dore.
His early years were spent in Strassburg, within the shadow of the
cathedral. His father was a civil engineer—methodical, calculating,
prosperous. The lad was the second of three sons: strong, bright,
intelligent boys.
In his travels up and down the Rhine the father often took little
Gustave with him, and the lad came to know each wild crag, and crowning
fortress, and bend in the river where strong men with spears and bows and
arrows used to lie in wait. In imagination Gustave repeopled the ruins and
filled the weird forests with curious, haunting shapes. The Rhine reeks
with history that merges off into misty song and fable; and this folklore
of the storied river filled the day-dreams and night-dreams of this
curious boy.
But all children have a vivid imagination, and the chief problem of
modern education is how to conserve and direct it. As yet no scheme or
plan or method has been devised that shows results, and the men of
imagination seem to be those who have succeeded in spite of school. In
Gustave Dore we have the curious spectacle of Nature keeping bright and
fresh in the man all those strange conceptions of the child, and
multiplying them by a man's strength.
The wild imaginings of Gustave only served his father and
mother with food for laughter; and his erratic absurdities in making
pictures supplied the neighbors' fun.
But actions that are funny in a child become disturbing in a man; he's
cute when little, but "sassy" when older.
Gustave, however, did not put away childish things. When he had reached
the age of indiscretion—was fourteen, and had a frog in his throat, and
was conscious of being barefoot—he still imagined things and made
pictures of them. His father was distressed, and sought by bribes to get
him to quit scrawling with pencil and turn his attention to logarithms and
other useful things; but with only partial success.
When fifteen he accompanied his father and older brother to Paris,
where the older boy was to be installed in the Ecole Polytechnique. It was
the hope of the father that, once in Paris, Gustave would consent to
remain with his brother, and thus, by a change of base, a reform in his
tastes would come about and he would leave the Rhine with its foolish
old-woman tales and cease the detestable habit of picturing them.
It was the first time Gustave had ever been to Paris—the first time
he had ever visited a large city. He was fascinated, captivated,
enthralled. Paris was fairyland and paradise. He announced to his father
and brother that he would not return to Alsace, neither would he go to the
Polytechnique. They told him he must do either
one or the other; and as the father was going back home in two days,
Gustave could have just forty-eight hours in which to decide his destiny.
Passing by the office of the "Journal pour Rire," the father
and son gaping in all the windows like true rustics, they saw announced an
illustrated edition of "The Labors of Hercules." Some of the
illustrations were shown in the window with the hope of tempting possible
buyers. Gustave looked upon these illustrations with critical eye, and his
face flushed scarlet—but he said nothing.
He knew the book; aye, every tale in it, with all its possible
variations, had long been to him a bit of true history. To him Hercules
lived yesterday, and, confusing hearsay with memory, he was almost ready
to swear that he was present and used a shovel when the strong man cleaned
the Augean stables.
The next morning, when his father and brother were ready to go to visit
the Polytechnique, Gustave pleaded illness and was allowed to lie abed.
But no sooner was he alone than he seized pencil and paper and began to
make pictures illustrating "The Labors of Hercules."
In two hours he had half a dozen pictures done, and fearing the return
of his father he hurried with his pictures to Monsieur Philipon, director
of the "Journal pour Rire." He shouldered past the attendants,
pushed his way into the office of the great man, and spreading his
pictures out on the desk cried, "Look here, sir!
that is the way 'The Labors of Hercules' should be illustrated!"
It was the action of one absorbed and lost in an idea. Had he taken
thought he would have hesitated, been abashed, self-conscious—and
probably been repulsed by the flunkies—before seeing Monsieur Philipon.
It was all the sublime effrontery and conceit—or naturalness, if you
please—of a country bumpkin who did not know his place.
Philipon glanced at the pictures and then looked at the boy. Then he
looked at the pictures. He called to another man in an adjoining room and
they both looked at the pictures. Then they consulted in an undertone. It
was suggested that the boy draw another illustration right there and then.
They wished to make sure that he himself did the work, and they wanted to
see how long it took.
Gustave sat down and drew another picture.
Philipon refused to let the lad leave the office, and dispatched a
messenger for his father. When the father arrived, a contract was drawn up
and signed, whereby it was provided that the "infant" should
remain with Philipon for three years, on a yearly salary of five thousand
francs, with the proviso that the lad should attend the school, Lycee
Charlemagne, for four hours every day.
Thus, while yet a child, without discipline or the friendly instruction
that wisdom might have lent, he was launched on
the tossing tide of commercial life.
His "Hercules" was immediately published and made a most
decided hit—a palpable hit. Paris wanted more, and Philipon wished to
supply the demand. The new artist's pictures in the "Journal pour
Rire" boomed the circulation, and more illustrations were in demand.
Philipon suggested that the four hours a day at school was unnecessary—Gustave
knew more already than the teachers.
Gustave agreed with him, and his pay was doubled. More work rushed in,
and Gustave illustrated serial after serial with ease and surety, giving
to every picture a wildness and weirdness and awful comicality. The work
was unlike anything ever before seen in Paris: every one was saying,
"What next!" and to add to the interest, Philipon, from time to
time, wrote articles for various publications concerning "the child
illustrator" and "the artistic prodigy of the 'Journal pour Rire.'"
With such an entree into life, how was it possible that he should ever
become a master? His advantages were his disadvantages, and all his faults
sprang naturally as a result of his marvelous genius. He was the victim of
facility.
Everything in this world happens because something else has happened
before. Had the thing that happened first been different, the thing that
followed would not be what it is.
Had Gustave Dore entered the art world of Paris in the conventional
way, the master might have toned down his exuberance, taught him reserve,
and gradually led him along until his tastes were formed and character
developed. And then, when he had found his gait and come to know his
strength, the name of Paul Gustave Dore might have stood out alone as a
bright star in the firmament—the one truly great modern.
Or, on the other hand, would the ossified discipline and set rules of a
school have shamed him into smirking mediocrity and reduced his native
genius to neutral salts?
Who will be presumptuous enough to say what would have occurred had not
this happened and that first taken place?
Before Gustave Dore had been in Paris a year his father died. Shortly
after, the Strassburg home was broken up, and Madame Dore followed her son
to Paris. Gustave's tireless pencil was bringing him a better income than
his father had ever made; and the mother and three sons lived in comfort.
The mother admonished Gustave to apply himself to pure art, and not be
influenced by Philipon and the others who were making fortunes by his
genius. And this advice he intended to follow—not yet, but very soon.
There were "Rabelais" and Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques"
to illustrate. These done, he would then enter the atelier of one of the
masters and take his time in doing the highest work.
But before the books were done, others came, with retainers in advance.
Then a larger work was begun, to illustrate the Crimean War, in five
hundred battle-scenes.
And so he worked—worked like a steam-engine—worked without ceasing.
He illustrated Shakespeare's "Tempest" as only Dore could; then
came Coleridge, Moore, Hood, Milton, Dante, Hugo, Gautier, and great plans
were being laid to illustrate the Bible.
The years were slipping past. His brothers had found snug places in the
army, and he and his mother lived together in affluence. Between them
there was an affection that was very loverlike. They were comrades in
everything—all his hopes, plans and ambitions were rehearsed to her. The
love that he might have bestowed on a wife was reserved for his mother,
and, fortunately, she had a mind strong enough to comprehend him.
In the corner of the large, sunny apartment that was set apart for his
mother's room, he partitioned off a little room for himself, where he
slept on an iron cot. He wished to be near her, so that each night he
could tell her of what he had done during the day, and each morning
rehearse his plans for the coming hours. By telling her, things shaped
themselves, and as he described the pictures he would draw, others came to
him.
The confessional seems a crying need of every human heart—we wish to
tell some one. And without this confessional, where one soul can outpour
to another that fully sympathizes and understands, marriage is a hollow,
whited mockery, full of dead men's bones.
There is a desire of the heart that makes us long to impart our joy to
another. Corot once caught the sunset on his canvas as the great orb sank,
a golden ball, behind the hills of Barbizon. He wished to show the picture
to some one—to tell some one, and looking around saw only a cottage on
the edge of the wood a quarter of a mile away, and thither he ran, crying
to the astonished farmer, "I've got it! I've got it!"
When Dore did a particularly good piece of work, in the first
intoxication of joy he would run home, kiss his mother
on both cheeks, and picking her up in his strong arms run with her about
the rooms.
At other times he would play leap-frog over the chairs, vault over the
piano, and jump across the table. And this wild joy that comes after work
well done he knew for many years. In the evening, after a particularly
good day, he would play the violin and sing entire scenes from some opera,
his mother turning the leaves.
As to his skill as a musician, is this testimonial on the back of a
fine photograph I once had the pleasure of handling: "As a souvenir
of tender friendship, presented to Gustave Dore, who joins with his genius
as a painter the talents of a distinguished violinist and charming
tenor.—G. Rossini."
The illustrations for Dante's "Inferno" were done in Dore's
twenty-second year, and for this work he was decorated with the Cross of
the Legion of Honor. He never did better work, and at this time his hand
and brain seemed at their best.
Every great writer and every great artist makes vigorous use of his
childhood impressions. Childhood does not know it is storing up for the
days to come, but its memories sink deep into the soul, and when called
upon to express, the man reaches out and prints from the plates that are
bitten deep; and these are the pictures of his early youth—or else they
tell of a time when he loved a woman.
The first named are the more reliable, for sex and love have
been made forbidden subjects, until self-consciousness, affectation and
untruth creep easily into their accounting. All literature and all art are
secondary sex manifestations, just as surely as the song of birds or the
color and perfume of flowers are sex qualities. And so it happens that all
art and all literature is a confession; and it occurs, too, that childhood
does not stand out sharp and clear on memory's chart until it is past and
adolescence lies between. Then maturity gives back to the man the
childhood that is gone forever.
Many of the world's best specimens of literature are built on the
impressions of childhood. Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and I'll name you
another—James Whitcomb Riley—have written immortal books with the
autobiography of childhood for both warp and woof.
Gustave Dore's best work is a reproduction of his childhood's thoughts,
feelings and experiences—all well colored with the stuff that dreams are
made of.
The background of every good Dore picture is a deep wood or
mountain-pass or dark ravine. The wild, romantic passes of the Vosges, and
the sullen crags, topped with dark mazes of wilderness, were ever in his
mind, just as he saw them yesterday when he clutched his father's hand and
held his breath to hear the singing of the wood-nymphs 'mong the branches.
His tracery of bark and branch, and drooping bough held down with
weight of dew, are startlingly true. The great roots of giant trees,
denuded by storm and flood, lie exposed to view;
and deep vistas are given of shadowy glade and swift-running mountain
torrent. All is somber, terrible, and tells of forces that tossed these
mountain-tops like bowls, and of a Power immense, immeasurable,
incomprehensible, eternal in the heavens.
Dore's first exhibition in the Salon was made when he was eighteen, and
a few years later, when he was presented with the Cross of the Legion of
Honor, the decoration made his work exempt from jury examination. And so
every year he sent some large painting to the Salon.
His work was the wonder of Paris, and on every hand his illustrations
were in demand, but his canvases were too large in size and too terrible
in subject to fit private residences.
Patrons were cautious.
To own a "Dore" was proof of a high appreciation of art, or
else a lack of it—buyers did not know which.
They were afraid of being laughed at.
His competitors began to hoot and jeer. Not being able to make pictures
that would compete with his, they wrote him down in the magazines.
His name became a jest.
Various of his illustrations for the Bible were enlarged into immense
canvases, some of which were twenty feet long and twelve feet high. All
who looked upon these pictures were amazed by the fecundity in invention
and the skill shown in drawing; but the most telling criticism
against them was their defect in coloring. Dore could draw, but could not
color, and the report was abroad that he was color-blind.
The only buyers for his pictures came from England and America. Paris
loved art for art's sake, and the Bible was not popular enough to make its
illustration worth while. "What is this book you are working
on?" asked a caller.
It was different in London, where Spurgeon preached every Sunday to
three thousand people. The "Dores" taken to London attracted
much attention—"mostly from the size of the canvases,"
Parisians said. But the particular subject was the real attraction.
Instead of reading their daily "chapter," hard-working, tired
people went to see a Dore Bible picture where it was exposed in some
vacant storeroom and tuppence entrance-fee charged.
It occurred to certain capitalists that if people would go to see one
Dore, why would not a Dore gallery pay?
A company was formed, agents were sent to Paris and negotiations begun.
Finally, on payment of three hundred thousand dollars, forty large
canvases were secured, with a promise of more to come.
Dore took the money, and, the agents being gone, ran home to tell his
mother. She was at dinner with a little company of invited guests. Gustave
vaulted over the piano, played leap-frog among the chairs, and turning a
handspring across the table, incidentally sent his heels into
a thousand-dollar chandelier that came toppling down, smashing every dish
upon the table, and frightening the guests into hysterics.
"It's nothing," said Madame Dore; "it's nothing—Gustave
has merely done a good day's work!"
The "Dore Gallery" in London proved a great success. Spurgeon
advised his flock to see it, that they might the better comprehend Bible
history; the Reverend Doctor Parker spoke of the painter as "one
inspired by God"; Sunday-schools made excursions thither; men in
hobnailed shoes knelt before the pictures, believing they were in the
presence of a vision.
And all these things were duly advertised, just as we have been told of
the old soldier who visited the Gettysburg Cyclorama at Chicago and
looking upon the picture, he suddenly cried to his companion, "Down,
Bill, down! by t' Lord, there's a feller sightin' his gun on us!"
Barnum offered the owners twice what they paid for the "Dore
Gallery," with intent to move the pictures to America, but they were
too wise to accept.
Twenty-eight of the canvases were eventually sold, however, for a sum
greater than was paid for the lot, yet enough remained to make a most
representative display; and no American in London misses seeing the Dore
Gallery, any more than we omit Madame Tussaud's Wax-Works.
In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three, Dore visited
England and was welcomed as a conquering hero. The Prince of Wales and the
nobility generally paid him every honor. He was presented to the Queen,
and Victoria thanked him for the great work he had done, and asked him to
inscribe for her a copy of the "Dore Bible."
More than this, the Queen directed that several Dore pictures be
purchased and placed in Windsor Castle.
Of course, all Paris knew of Dore's success in England. Paris laughed.
"What did I tell you?" said Berand. And Paris reasoned that what
England and America gushed over must necessarily be very bad. The
directors of the Salon made excuses for not hanging his pictures.
Dore had become rich, but his own Paris—the Paris that had been a
foster-mother to him—refused to accredit him the honor which he felt was
his due.
In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-eight, smarting under the continued gibes
and geers of artistic France, he modeled a statue which he entitled
"Glory." It represents a woman holding fast in affectionate
embrace a beautiful youth, whose name we are informed is Genius. The woman
has in one hand a laurel-wreath; hidden in the leaves of this wreath is a
dagger with which she is about to deal the victim a fatal blow.
Dore grew dispirited, and in vain did his mother and near friends seek
to rally him out of the despondency that was settling down upon him. They
said, "You are only a little over forty, and many a good man has
never been recognized at all until after
that—see Millet!"
But he shook his head.
When his mother died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-one, it seemed to snap
his last earthly tie. Of course he exaggerated the indifference there was
towards him; he had many friends who loved him as a man and respected him
as an artist.
But after the death of his mother he had nothing to live for, and
thinking thus, he soon followed her. He died in Eighteen Hundred
Eighty-three, aged fifty years.
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