Description: Celebrated French artist and illustrator Gustave Doré (1832-1883) scribbled and signed this brief letter declining an invitation.

 

Doré was an artistic child prodigy, producing drawings that were mature beyond his years. He began his professional career as a caricaturist for the French paper Le Journal pour rire, and went on to illustrate books by Cervantes, Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, and Dante. His illustrations of Cervantes’s Don Quixote in particular became quite famous, influencing later readers, artists, and stage and film directors.

 

Written on two sides of an 8” x 5 1/8” piece of paper which is tipped (along the left margin) to a card stock album page that measures: 9 ½” x 6 1/8”. Item #A00942.

 

Condition: Mounted left margin hides two letters of text on second page, since apparently, Dore was inclined to write his letters to the very edge of the sheet of paper. Otherwise in very good condition with a large signature.