Cervantès, Don Quichotte, Le gouverneur Sancho Panza rendant la justice. Tome 2, ch.45

First edition. Wood engraving signed in the plate by the artist. A small foxing spot in the upper margin, not touching the engraving.
Plate created specifically for the illustration of Cervantes' Don Quixote for the Hachette edition of 1863.

Gustave Doré traveled to Spain first in 1855, in the company of Théophile Gautier and 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 knowledgeable hispanophile, who would recount their journey in his Voyage en Espagne.
Doré went there mainly with a view to illustrating Don Quixote: "I am therefore going to the homeland of this illustrious hidalgo to study all the places he traveled through and filled with his exploits and thus create something that will have its local flavor". Gustave Doré would thus conduct several working sessions with Louis Viardot, translator of Cervantes' text.
Cervantes' novel is 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 be the subject of unanimous praise, notably from Émile Zola: "They call that illustrating a work: I maintain that it's remaking it. Instead of one masterpiece, the human spirit counts two".

See our other engravings by Gustave Doré

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

Virtual exhibition about Gustave Doré on the Gallica website