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First Edition, First Issue of one of the two earliest and most rare of all Doré's illustrated books. Only Les Travaux d'Hercule precedes this book, and like the Trois Artistes Incompris et Mecontens is very rarely if ever seen in commerce. Illustrated with an engraved title-page as the upper cover illustration of the book, and over 150 woodcut illustrations throughout. Folio, publisher's original and earliest binding of pictorially illustrated yellow paper over boards, the upper cover with all-over illustrations printed in red and black. [1], 25 pp. A well preserved and handsome copy of this very rare and fragile book, some expert and unobtrusive strengthening at the tips and edges, a book seldom if ever encountered, and even then, nearly always with very considerable wear and breakage. FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST AND MOST RARE OF DORÉ'S ILLUSTRATED WORKS. 'At 15 years of age Doré had begun his career working as a caricaturist for the French paper Le journal pour rire. Wood-engraving was his primary method at this time. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, he made several text comics, like Les Travaux d'Hercule (1847), Trois artistes incompris et mécontents (1850-1), Les Dés-agréments d'un voyage d'agrément (1851) and L'Histoire de la Sainte Russie (1854), but subsequently went on to win commissions to depict scenes from books by Cervantes, Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, and Dante. He also illustrated "Gargantua et Pantagruel" in 1854. 'Trois Artists is a fascinating book.but dating the Trois Artistes original is a bibliographical challenge. The earliest Journal pour Rire advertisement was in November 29, 1850 and the book itself has a Dec. 1850 date in the publisher's catalogue. The second larger Journal pour Rire advertisement was dated January 31, 1851, and the book was listed by February 11, 1851 in Bibliographie de la France. Whether December or January, the book remains, along with Les Travaux d'Hercule, the most rare of Gustave Doré's illustrated books and one of the earliest "comic books" produced. Gustave Doré (1832-1883), was described by Saturday Review as "The most startling art phenomenon in Europe; his genius at each turn changes, like the colors in a kaleidescope, into something new and unexpected." The Fine Arts Quarterly Review also wrote: "Doré is a great and marvelous genius, a poet a nation produces once in a thousand years. He is the most imaginative, the profoundest, the most productive poet that ever sprang from the French race." These are 1860s quotes from England about a French artist. What did Doré actually do? He created a series of dozens of literary folios with thousands of full-page engravings that are still being borrowed today in hundreds of popular culture genres. The Doré phenomenon was all the more remarkable because he was being viciously attacked by British elitists like John Ruskin, who asserted that Doré was the Devil, come to destroy the morality of the British public who were unsophisticated peasants. But those "unsophisicated peasants" who admired Doré art included the Queen of England, the Prince of Wales, the Poet Laureate, Charles Dickens, plus Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, not to mention the Pope. Doré s dramatic, mystical, otherworldly imagery transcended dimensions of the physical and the spiritual. While other illustrators showed people standing in a room talking, Doré showed images of Spiral Nebula, Flying Saucers, the depths of Hell, and the opening of Heaven in his folios for Dante, Milton, Tennyson, The Bible, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Fairy Tales, Fables, Don Quixote, Baron Munchausen, The Ancient Mariner, Doré s social commentary masterpiece London, A Pilgrimage, and Poe s The Raven, which Doré did not live to see published. Doré was a creative geniuses with unlimited imagination. Consider that Gustave Doré, at the age of 15 years, and a diminutive teenager walked into the office of Charles Philipon to show his drawings. It is said that he looked to be about 12. Philipon was mes.
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