In 1865, Gustave Doré made about 250 full page Illustrations for La Sainte Bible, published in Tours by Alfred Mame. Doré then made forty more illustrations for a second edition published eight months later. In her book, Sarah Schaeffer tells us that Doré's images were “the most widely reproduced and influential scriptural imagery of the past several centuries.” Using Doré's work as a guide, she explores the function and scope of biblical imagery in the late nineteenth century in France, Great Britain, and the United States.
In the two decades before the Mame Bible was published, Doré had earned a reputation as a leading illustrator of periodicals and books. He honed his skill for accuracy with depictions of daily life in the press. Journalistic specificity was fundamental to Doré's Bible. He had the ability to make ancient, far-off events look accurate.
Book illustrations at that time were printed by means of wood engraving. For his Bible, Doré drew directly on wood blocks, which were then cut by a team of engravers whom he supervised. In wood engraving, the thickness and spacing of the lines control contrasts of light and dark, Doré's favorite and most powerful means of expression. For example, he depicts supernatural beings as ghostly, diaphanous forms of light against the dark.
Illustrated Bibles existed in earlier times, but in the nineteenth century, because of increasing literacy and the industrialization of publishing, the number of Bibles, illustrated or not, grew enormously. Secularization and criticism of the accuracy of the Bible, which was centered mostly in Germany, did not hinder that growth.
In France, the Catholic Church actually discouraged the reading of the Bible. Nevertheless, several publishers throughout the nineteenth century brought out Bibles illustrated with work by various artists or with reproductions of work by Old Masters. The first edition of the rather expensive Mame Bible with illustrations only by Doré sold out in eight days. French critics generally treated the Bible as a great work of literature, an epic poem, and a worthy subject for serious art. They praised the dynamism of Doré's illustrations. However, they universally agreed that Doré's depictions of Old Testament events were qualitatively better than his depictions of the New Testament. To visualize the life of Christ, Doré fell back on traditional representations that were not as dramatic as his Old Testament illustrations.
Critics often compared Doré's compositions to contemporary stage sets: what linked the two was the use of the architecture and sculpture of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia as the background for the action. Contemporary archeologists had recorded this exotic art and architecture in books or had brought specimens of it back to Europe. The Orientalism in Doré's Bible bolstered the argument that the biblical was historically accurate.
Doré also collaborated with the publisher John Cassell, who published many less expensive editions of Doré's Bible in Great Britain and the United States. They were enormously successful. Cassell was a Temperance leader active in the evangelicalism movement that flourished in nineteenth-century Britain. Many homes had a “Family Bible” not only with illustrations by Doré but also with diagrams, maps, and other material to explain the text. English readers enjoyed the spectacular nature of many of Doré's more ambitious scenes, their drama, and their appeal to pious emotions.
Doré also aspired to become a famous painter. In France, his work submitted to the Salon was dismissed because of his lack of academic training. But in England, Doré opened his own gallery in 1869 with several dozen of his religious paintings. For almost twenty-five years it was one of must-see sights of London. Critical acclaim was lavish and the religious fervor that his art inspired made him for a while the most famous painter in the world. Afterward, Doré's Gallery moved first to New York, then Chicago and Philadelphia in the 1890s.
In the United States, commercial exploitation of Doré's imagery spread their circulation. With the absence of copyright laws, publishers felt free to reproduce, pirate, and adapt Doré's work in numerous ways. New techniques of printing facilitated their spread. His Bible illustrations became picture books, lantern slides, lesson cards for Sunday school, and eventually films.
Schaefer's book catalogues at great length the success of Doré's Bible, the many publishers who sold so many editions of his work, the millions who saw his Bible Gallery, and the numerous adaptations of his work for years even after his death. Clearly, the Bible was popular in the late nineteenth century. But I am left wondering how Doré's art may have affected the reading of the Bible in that period. Did the illustrations foster a new interpretation? How did they alter the reader's imagination? Did the dramatized events that he depicted perhaps turn the Bible into a popular adventure story of heroes and their exploits? I would have like to have read more about evangelicalism and how Doré fulfilled its mission—rather than merely recounting how the religious movement made his Bibles a commercial success.
