Gustave Doré: Twelve Comic Strips

203 Pages·2015·96.24 MB·English

by  Gustave Doré

GUSTAVE DORÉ
GUSTAV E
DOR É
Twelve Comic Strips

Introduced and translated by
David Kunzle
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us
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of the Association of American University Presses.
Designed by Todd Lape
Frontis image on page ii: Doré, c. 1856–1858, by Nadar
Copyright © 2015 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2015
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doré, Gustave, 1832–1883
Gustave Doré : twelve comic strips / introduced and
translated by David Kunzle.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-62846-216-6 (hardback) —
ISBN 978-1-62674-589-6 (ebook) 1. Comic books,
strips, etc.—France. 2. Doré, Gustave, 1832–1883
3. Art, French—19th century. I. Kunzle, David.
PN6747.D66K86 2015
741.5’944—dc23 2014042181
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
For Marjoyrie, ever youthful, ever funny
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Contents
Preface 9
Introduction 11
Bibliography 57
THE COMIC STRIPS
1. Les Travaux d’Hercule
(The Labors of Hercules) 61
Album, 1847
2. Le Communisme en tableau
(Communism Depicted) 86
Journal pour Rire, 1848
3. La Vie en Province, Histoire d’une invitation à la campagne
(Life in the Provinces, Story of an Invitation to the Countryside) 89
Journal pour Rire, 1849
4. L’Homme aux Cent Mille Écus
(The Man with One Hundred Thousand Crowns) 94
Journal pour Rire, 1850
5. Trois Artistes Incompris et Mécontens
(Three Misunderstood and Discontented Artists) 115
Album, 1850
6. Voyage en Allemagne / Voyage sur le Rhin
(Trip to Germany / Trip on the Rhine) 142
Journal pour Rire, 1851
8 Contents
7. Les Trains de Plaisir de Môsieu Godard
(The Pleasure Trips of Mister Godard) 158
Journal pour Rire, 1851
8. Les Dés-Agréments d’un Voyage d’Agrément
(Displeasures of a Pleasure Trip) 162
Album, 1851
9. Une Ascension au Mont Blanc
(An Ascent of Mount Blanc) 188
Journal pour Rire, 1852
10. Vacances du Collégien
(Schoolboy’s Holiday) 192
Journal pour Rire, 1852
11. Une Heureuse Vocation
(A Fortunate Vocation) 196
Journal pour Rire, 1852
12. La Conscription
(The Conscription) 199
Journal pour Rire, 1853
Index 201
Preface
Among the masters of the nineteenth-century comic strip, Doré has
been much neglected. He is of course remembered best, and for good
reason, as the primary illustrator of literary classics of his age, which
gave him an unsurpassed international reputation, and concomitant
scholarly attention. He himself repudiated, and critics and biographers
have scanted, his beginnings as a caricaturist. These are rescued, for
the first time in English, by the present work.
Doré’s caricature is known to a few specialists in France, but fewer
still have pointed out that his mastery of the comic strip, or picture
story, in particular marks him as an entirely original figure in the post-
Töpffer era of revolutionary, mid–century France, when Daumier and
Gavarni, never comic strip artists, were dominant in caricature gener-
ally. Doré, remarkably, drew these comic strips, which total about a
dozen in number, when he was between fifteen and twenty-two years
old, for Charles Philipon’s Journal pour Rire (The Laughter Journal),
virtually dominating it for the years of its survival (1848–1855). He
also created three (actually four) longer, separately published albums,
which show him at his very best. They are consistently funny, often
ludicrous, and are infused with a graphic inventiveness that only the
twentieth century would catch up with. The topics covered by these
graphic stories include a parody of an ancient fable, the discomforts
of life in the country, the perils of artistic ambition, the absurdities
of mountaineering and travel whether by balloon or on foot, and the
antics of schoolboys.
This book provides a summary sociopolitical context for the cari-
cature of Doré, focusing on his comic strips in the Journal pour Rire,
the character of the journal, and the three comic strip albums done
while he worked there, all of which present originality, as well as being
prescient of his later work as illustrator of literary classics. Our analysis
reveals his debts to his predecessors in the comic strip, Töpffer, Cham,
and Nadar, but stops short of the Histoire de la Sainte Russie of 1854,
that huge summum of comic strip art with its 543 drawings, which has
been republished in the twentieth century, and is available in English
translation. None of Doré’s Journal strips has been republished. The
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