Cervantès, Don Quichotte, Là se termine le chant de l'amoureuse Altisidore. Tome 2, ch.44

First edition. Wood engraving signed in the plate by the artist. Some very discreet worming.
Plate created specifically for the illustration of Cervantes' Don Quixote in the Hachette edition of 1863.

Gustave Doré first travelled to Spain in 1855, in the company of Théophile Gautier and the publisher Paul Dalloz. In 1861, responding to a commission from the journal Le Tour du monde, he returned there with Baron Jean Charles Davillier, a learned hispanophile, who would recount their journey in his Voyage en Espagne.
Doré went there primarily with a view to illustrating Don Quixote: "Je me rends donc dans la patrie de cet illustre hidalgo pour étudier tous les lieux qu'il a parcourus et remplis de ses exploits et faire ainsi une chose qui aura son parfum local" ["I am therefore going to the homeland of this illustrious hidalgo to study all the places he traversed and filled with his exploits and thus create something that will have its local flavour"]. Gustave Doré would thus undertake several working sessions with Louis Viardot, translator of Cervantes' text.
Cervantes' novel ranks among the most illustrated narratives in European literature but Doré wanted to surpass his predecessors (Tony Johannot, Grandville, Daumier...). Upon its publication in 1863, the work would receive unanimous praise, notably from Emile Zola: "On appelle ça illustrer un ouvrage : moi, je prétends que c'est le refaire. Au lieu d'un chef-d'oeuvre, l'esprit humain en compte deux" ["They call that illustrating a work: I maintain that it is remaking it. Instead of one masterpiece, the human spirit now counts two"].

See our other engravings by Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré, L'Imaginaire au pouvoir (Musée d'Orsay, 2014)

Virtual exhibition on Gustave Doré on the Gallica website