If you’ve read any of my articles retelling narratives like Dante’s Inferno, you’ll be familiar with the illustrations of Gustave Doré (1832–1883), who is among the most prolific and famous in Europe. His prints overshadow his paintings, the subject of this and tomorrow’s article, and he was also a sculptor. Some of his landscapes are outstanding, but as they were produced during the era of Impressionism have been cast aside by history. In these two articles I concentrate on his narrative oil paintings, for if anyone understood narrative art, it should surely be such a prolific and successful illustrator.

Doré was a precocious child, and started his career as a caricaturist for a newspaper at the age of 15. By the 1850s his illustrations were being commissioned by major publishers in both France and Britain, including those for a new illustrated English Bible. Here are two prints from that work published in 1866.

The first shows the popular story of Judith and Holofernes; Doré avoids the most powerful scene of the decapitation itself, but follows the more guarded approach adopted by Etty and others, to make it more acceptable to a Victorian publisher.

His Death on the Pale Horse, accompanying the book of Revelation 6:8, remains one of the most popular and perhaps iconic portraits of the ‘Grim Reaper’, whose visits to families were all too frequent at the time.

Doré first illustrated Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as early as 1857, and returned to it in the mid 1860s. He painted several works derived from the first part Inferno. This describes Dante becoming lost in a wood and unable to find the way to salvation. He is rescued by the classical Roman poet Virgil, and the pair then descend and travel through the underworld together. By convention, Dante himself is shown dressed in red robes with a distinctive hat, and Virgil with a laurel wreath on his head.

When he reaches the foot of a hill, Dante sees its upper slopes already lit by the first rays of the sun. As he starts walking up, his way is blocked first by a leopard, then by a lion, and finally by a wolf.

The sinners in hell are divided according to the type of sin; in this oil painting, Doré shows Virgil (left) and Dante at the last of these ‘circles’, the ninth, for those who committed sins of malice, such as treachery. These sinners are shown partially frozen into an icy lake, with additional blocks of ice scattered around, just as described by Dante.

Among the side-stories related by Dante is that of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, who are in the second circle for sins of lust. She committed adultery with her husband’s brother, Paolo Malatesta. Her husband Giovanni (or Gian Cotto) then killed them both. In this oil painting Doré shows the lovers, Francesca’s stab wound visible near the middle of her chest, Paolo’s still bleeding, as they are blown around and buffeted for their sins. At the lower right he shows Dante and Virgil looking on. This was first shown at the Salon in 1863, and was praised highly by the critics.

Doré also illustrated Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote in a lengthy set that has been used by others as the basis for further illustrated editions.

When the newlyweds Basil and Quiteria entertain Don Quixote and Sancho Panza for three days, they visit the Cave of Montesinos and the Lakes of Ruidera nearby. To mark this well-known episode, Doré painted this non-narrative scene of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza Entertained by Basil and Quiteria in oils in about 1863.

Many of Doré’s easel paintings were independent of his illustrations.

One of the few paintings that I have seen that captures the experience of dense clouds of butterflies is his Summer from about 1860-70. Set in what appears to be an upland or alpine meadow, its butterflies look like large flowers that have taken to the air.

Between Sky and Earth (1862) remains more of a mystery. The viewer is high above the fields outside Doré’s native Strasbourg, where several small groups are flying kites. The kite shown at the upper left has just been penetrated by a flying bird. Another unseen kite, off the top of the canvas, has a traditional tail, at the end of which is tied an anxious frog by a hindleg. However, a stork appears to have designs on seizing the opportunity to eat the frog, and is approaching from behind, its bill wide open and ready for the meal.

This could be an allegory, of course, but is probably a humorous depiction of kite-flying at the time, when people were still puzzled as to what happened to living creatures as they ascended higher in the atmosphere.

By the late 1860s Doré was tackling more heavyweight narratives on very large canvases. The Triumph Of Christianity Over Paganism (c 1868) has become as elaborately symbolic as the paintings of the younger Gustave Moreau. In the upper part of this painting, Christ, bearing his cross, is surrounded by an angelic host flying out, swords drawn and shields borne, to fight the pagan evils on the earth below. Among those are recognisable gods of the Classical pantheon, with Zeus/Jupiter at the centre, holding a thunderbolt in his left hand.

In his humorous Evening in Alsace from 1869, four young men are squeezed into an open window as they try to charm the four young women standing below. Along comes a flock of geese to join in and ruin their chances.