Doré’s London: All 180 Illustrations from London, a Pilgrimage

108 Pages·2012·20.92 MB·English

by  Gustave Doré

Father Thames

Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note
Doré’s London: All 180 Illustrations from London, A Pilgrimage, first published
by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2004, is a new presentation of all the illustrations
from London: A Pilgrimage, by Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold, which was
originally published by Grant & Co., London, in 1872.

DOVER Pictorial Archive SERIES

This book belongs to the Dover Pictorial Archive Series. You may use the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doré, Gustave, 1832–1883.
Doré’s London : all 180 illustrations from London, a pilgrimage / Gustave Doré.
p. cm.—(Dover pictorial archive series) 9780486135649
1. Doré, Gustave, 1832–1883—Catalogs. 2. London (England)—In art—
Catalogs. I. Jerrold, Blanchard, 1826–1884. London, a pilgrimage. II. Title. III.
Series.

NE650.D646A4 2003b
NE650.D646A4 2003b
760’.092—dc 22
2003062586
Book design by Carol Belanger Grafton

Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East
2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
BY THE TIME of his first visit to London in 1868, the French artist Gustave
Doré (1832–1883) had secured a worldwide reputation. Brilliantly observant and
brilliantly imaginative, he had taught himself to draw as a child; by the age of
fifteen he was contributing lithographic caricatures to the Journal pour rire, and
after the death of his father he supported his brothers and mother as an illustrator
and journalist. His first real fame came from his illustrations of Rabelais, which
were first published in 1854.
During that first visit to London he was shown around by his English friend
Blanchard Jerrold (1826–1884), the French correspondent for the London Daily
News, whom he had first met thirteen years earlier when both men had traveled
to Boulogne to cover Queen Victoria’s visit to France. Doré was fascinated by
London, and he and Jerrold began to discuss the possibility of doing a book on
the city. During Doré’s second visit, in the spring of 1869, they began the studies
for the book. London: A Pilgrimage was published in 1872—appearing first in
monthly parts and later as a bound volume.
Jerrold’s original plan had been for a panorama that would include all classes
of Londoners, but he and Doré lacked the time and resources for such a vast
undertaking. Although they certainly did not ignore the fashionable world, they
had to cut back somewhat on their projected coverage of society, Parliament, and
the suburbs. (And the drawings Doré did make of le beau monde are bland,
prettified, and forgettable.) Some Londoners, feeling that Jerrold and Doré had
concentrated unfairly on the bleaker aspects of London life, took umbrage; as a
writer in the Westminster Review complained, “Doré gives us sketches in which
the commonest, the vulgarest external features are set down.”
When looked at almost a century and a half later, much of Doré’s London
does seem to be a bleak, dismal place. Launching into his description of the day
of the great boat race (the competition between Cambridge and Oxford for which
all London turned out on 6 April 1870), Jerrold says “I was aroused by [Doré’s]
friendly voice . . . asking what had happened. We were well into the morning—
and it was as dark as the darkest midnight. The two Pilgrims confronted one
another candle in hand . . . in presence of a completely representative London
another candle in hand . . . in presence of a completely representative London
fog. It was choking: it made the eyes ache.” What a terrible picture. Who could
abide living in such a place, or among such squalor and poverty as Doré has
brought to life in many of these pictures?
But Doré loved London. He did not find it at all ugly, but bustling and alive.
Even the dreariest inhabitants of the great metropolis, he found, could sometimes
shine with the unquenchable exuberance of life, and even on the dreariest days
the sun might come out—as it did, eventually, on the day of the boat race. On
such a day, writes Jerrold, even the poorest of Londoners “have a bit of sunlight
upon their faces. The match boys [and] even the shoe-blacks have caught the
laughing spirit of the day.” For Doré it was all fodder for his pen. He loved it all
and recorded it all with swift, accurate strokes, bringing graphic immortality to a
period and place that otherwise would be lost, as in a London fog, in the
smothering gray haze of time.
1. A Morning Ride / 2. The Docks—The Concordia