Cervantès, Don Quichotte, Les meuniers les tirèrent l'un l'autre, par les pieds, par la tête. Gravure originale sur bois debout. Tome 2, ch.29

First edition. Wood engraving signed in the plate by the artist.
Plate specially created for the illustration of Cervantes' Don Quixote for the 1863 Hachette edition.
Gustave Doré first traveled to Spain 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, an avid hispanophile, who would recount their journey in his Voyage en Espagne.
Doré went there primarily 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 work sessions with Louis Viardot, translator of Cervantes' text.
Cervantes' novel is among the most illustrated stories 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 Emile Zola: "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 around Gustave Doré on the Gallica website