Gustave Doré Prints: Dante, The Raven and the Engravings That Defined the Sublime
This article is part of our Ultimate Fine Art Print Buyer's Guide.
If you want one artist for a dark, dramatic wall this autumn, Gustave Doré is the obvious choice. His black-and-white engravings have angels, ravens, wolves and ghosts in them, and they still look striking a hundred and fifty years later. They are also among the easiest pictures to live with: no colours to match, and they look at home in almost any frame.
In brief: Pick Doré by subject. For something grand and luminous, choose one of the Dante engravings. For gothic atmosphere, choose The Raven or Death on the Pale Horse. For something dark but warm, choose a fairy tale. And if you would rather have colour, his painted Scottish landscapes are a different Doré altogether.
Doré, briefly
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the most famous illustrator of the nineteenth century. Working with a team of skilled engravers, he illustrated Dante, the Bible, Cervantes, Rabelais, Perrault's fairy tales and Edgar Allan Poe, and his pictures became the way several generations imagined those books. Wood engraving let him build light out of thousands of fine lines, so his pictures read from across a room and still reward a close look.
Four kinds of Doré, and where each one hangs
1. Dante: for a big wall that can take something monumental
Doré's illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy are his best-known work. The Celestial Rose, shown above, is the most famous: Dante and Beatrice, two small dark figures on a cloud, look up into an enormous spiral of angels that opens into a burst of white light. It is the brightest thing Doré ever made, and it holds a large wall on its own.
The Heavenly Steersman is quieter: a tall winged angel stands in the prow of a boat full of hooded souls, gliding in to a misty shore, while Dante and Virgil watch from the rocks. It is all soft greys and silvers, and calm enough for a bedroom or a reading room.
Doré also painted Dante in oils. Dante and Virgil in the Ninth Circle of Hell shows the two poets, one in a deep blue cloak and one in red, standing on a frozen lake in a grey mist, with the damned trapped in the ice around them. It is a dark, wide picture, and works best large, above a sofa or a long sideboard.
Room: living room, a library or a high hallway. Frame: black for the engravings; brown walnut for the painting.
2. The Raven and the gothic Doré: for studies and dark corners
Doré's last great project was Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, and it is the most purely gothic thing he made. In Perched upon a bust of Pallas the black bird sits on a helmeted marble bust above a doorway, with a fan of pale, ghostly faces glowing behind it. In Once upon a midnight dreary the narrator has fallen asleep in his armchair with a book in his hand, beside a lamp, while the pale face of a girl appears at his shoulder. It is the opening of the poem in one picture, and it is ideal above a reading chair.
For the most dramatic choice, Death on the Pale Horse, from Doré's Bible, shows a hooded rider with a scythe galloping across the clouds on a white horse, with a crowd of winged monsters pouring after him out of the dark. It is almost entirely black, so the white horse seems to glow. And for something smaller and stranger, The Witch is a tall, narrow drawing of a scowling old woman with a broom over her shoulder and long ragged hair, picked out in white against a starry night.
Room: study, library, hallway, a home office. Frame: black, at a generous size — the fine lines need room.
3. The fairy tales: dark, but warm
Doré's illustrations for Perrault's fairy tales are the same dark forests and shadows, but with a sense of humour. Little Red Riding Hood: In Bed with the Wolf is the famous one — the little girl, clutching the sheet, looking sideways at the wolf in her grandmother's frilled bonnet. In Tom Thumb: A Light in the Night Forest a group of small brothers stands in a moonlit clearing, looking up at Tom, who has climbed to the very top of a tall bare tree to search for a light. Donkey Skin: The Cart under the Crescent Moon is the gentlest of all: a princess in a little cart drawn by a sheep, travelling down a forest road towards a thin crescent moon.
Room: a hallway, a guest room, a reading nook. Frame: black or natural oak.
4. The other Doré: painted landscapes in colour
Few people know that Doré was also a painter of landscapes, and that he loved Scotland. Loch Lomond is all drama: heavy storm clouds breaking over a valley, shafts of light falling on the water, and russet heather in the foreground. Scottish Highlands is greener and softer, with mist on the mountains and a small figure on a path above a loch. These are the Doré pictures for a warm living room, and they bring the same sense of the sublime as the engravings, in colour.
Room: living room, dining room. Frame: brown walnut or natural oak.
A ready-made gallery wall
If you want a whole wall rather than one picture, the Dark Visions Statement Wall puts Doré alongside William Blake, Pisanello and Elihu Vedder: ten dark, mythical pictures in black frames, built around a large Blake in the centre. It is the quickest way to make a study or a stairwell feel like a private library.
Size, paper and framing
Engravings are full of fine detail, so the most common mistake is buying them too small. A Doré looks its best at a size where you can see the lines from where you usually sit — above a sofa, aim for art that spans roughly 60 to 75 per cent of its width. Every print is made on Hahnemühle fine art paper with archival pigment inks, and a matte surface keeps the blacks deep instead of shiny; Textured Fine Art Paper vs Smooth Matte Paper explains why that matters for line work. Framed prints come in black, white, natural oak and brown walnut, and How to Frame Art Prints in 4 Easy Steps covers the rest.
If you like Doré's darker side, Dark, Strange and Beautiful: Symbolist and Mystic Art for Autumn Walls covers the painters who came just after him — Redon, Delville, Böcklin and Kubin.
Summary: Dante for a big wall that wants something monumental. The Raven and Death on the Pale Horse for a study or a dark corner. The fairy tales for a hallway or a guest room. The Scottish landscapes if you want Doré in colour. Then buy it bigger than you think.
Want to keep exploring? Browse Classic Illustration & Engraving, Literature & Theatre, Religion & Spirituality, Dramatic and Black & White art prints.
