Castle on the Rhône
Artist:
Gustave Doré
(French, 1832 - 1883)
Culture: French
Date: ca. 1878
Place made:France
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
39 1/2 x 29 in. (100.3 x 73.7 cm)
Credit Line: Bequest of Gilbert M. Denman, Jr.
Object number: 2005.1.169
Signed: Signed lower left: G. Dore
Provenance: sold by Spencer A. Samuels & Company, Ltd., New York, to Gilbert M. Denman, Jr. (1921-2004), San Antonio, 1970; Gilbert M. Denman, Jr., by bequest to San Antonio Museum of Art, 2005
Label Text
The thirteenth-century Château de Spesbourg towers over the Rhone river near the border city of Strasbourg, in northeastern France, where the painter Gustave Doré was born and raised. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 between France and Germany, Strasbourg came under German control until the end of World War I. Based in Paris, the artist painted this scene from memory, probably as a nostalgic form of protest against the loss of his boyhood home.
Although Gustave Doré was a painter and sculptor, his lasting reputation is due to his work as an illustrator. Doré’s dramatic engravings accompanied important nineteenth-century editions of the Bible, the Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, and the Italian Renaissance poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, for which Doré created enduring images of Hell and its torments.
(William Keyse Rudolph, 2018)
Although Gustave Doré was a painter and sculptor, his lasting reputation is due to his work as an illustrator. Doré’s dramatic engravings accompanied important nineteenth-century editions of the Bible, the Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, and the Italian Renaissance poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, for which Doré created enduring images of Hell and its torments.
(William Keyse Rudolph, 2018)
On view
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
