Versailles et Paris en 1871, by Gustave Doré

(If I knew the art historical literature better I’d know if anybody had written a study of what Van Gogh owes to the traditions of nineteenth-century caricature. Because it’s clearlt a major line feeding into his practice. It is not to diminish his genius one jot or tittle, I think, to suggest that he creates in-a-sense caricature images when he paints).

Goodness, yes – Peake really does look like a poor man’s Doré, once you’ve seen a bit of Doré. That’s not to say Peake’s stuff isn’t good – a working man’s Doré is something to be…

I ‘m afraid I don’t see any connection between Doré and Van Gogh, or Van Gogh and caricature. I was doubtful, but intrigued enough to read a bit more. Doré is frequently described as a ‘self-taught’ prodigy. Blanche Roosevelt’s 1885 biography (Google Books) while not entirely definitive is probably much better than anything in Wiki, or in many modern studies. And it can be downloaded free. Roosevelt includes a very large number of early Doré works, including the illustrations he did for a book he prepared for a neighbour. His father was an engineer, and a surveyor, and would need to be handy with a pencil himself. Doré was an accomplished illustrator and caricaturist by the age of fifteen, in much the same way that Mozart was an accomplished composer as a youth. Lots of family and extended family support. Most of Doré’s early work was in the realm of caricature, but he cut his teeth on realistic depictions of landscapes and architecture, as we might expect from the son of an engineer and surveyor.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion on Van Gogh. My own is that he failed utterly to produce much of anything of interest to anyone until effectively abandoned his efforts to produce realistic illustrations of the sort most in demand by book and magazine publishers of the time. He retreated into his own world and his own vision of the world and found himself and his art, much of which is stunning and glorious. His rendering of Newgate may be superior to the original. Van Gogh’s copies, however, are very uneven. He lacked entirely the ability to produce anything in clear perspective. My guess is that he relied very heavily on the composition of the Doré original for the stability we find in the Van Gogh version. Van Gogh has as much in common with Doré as he does with Rembrandt, as in none.

On the question of caricature in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s no accident that the 18th is often called the age of satire and we need look no farther than Hogarth for that. We have lots and lots of cartoons mocking the powers of the day. The nude, of course, was the test for all aspiring artists from the time of Da Vinci well into the 19th century, a test Doré passed with ease. Painters sometimes included obscene and other offensive material in renderings of their most famous works available only to private audiences, usually peers, which were later removed. The ability, then, to produce accurate, lifelike renderings of the human body was a skill demanded of all painters/artists worthy of the name. Both Delacroix and Gericault produced caricatures, as well as much more serious works. Humor and mockery is built into Watteau and Claude Vernet, and both his son and grandson produced a great many caricatures.

The 1885 biography seems a good read, highly recommended as a starting point.

7 Which Doré caricature did Van Gogh copy? I think you may rushed your reply.

Adam is welcome to his supposition that caricature informed Van Gogh’s work. It’s certainly possible. Nineteenth-century masters often produced caricatures with ease, and often as an exercise, elongating a nose, or chin, raising eyebrows, etc. Manipulating facial features was an essential skill for any portrait painter. Van Gogh lacked the basic skills to reproduce the human form. That doesn’t make him a ‘bad’ artist, but it doesn’t mean he was elongating and distorting perspective for artistic effect. The debate will likely continue. Van Gogh’s Millet is dreadful, but his Rembrandts – Lazarus and the Half-Angel are among his best. But none of these paintings are copies after caricatures. Are they?

Which Doré Van Gogh chose is worth considering for reasons and composition. His rendering of the Newgate crowd is uncharacteristically well-organized, and his manipulation of color and space greatly improves upon the original, and expands the emotional range of the Doré piece, which is unimaginative and predictably bleak. A masterpiece from a fine illustration, absolutely; but not a caricature, and not after a caricature, as far as I can see.

You’ve done good service to bring the Doré illustrations/caricatures to us all.

The Musée d’Orsay has an astonishing collectkon of 3D caricatures by Daumier in clay. Has any other artist ever done anything comparable?

Does the one in the hat (with almost a “Y” or a “P” on the hat) look just a bit like Putin? (Or am I just starting to see him everywhere?)

If you like Doré, definitely check his Rabelais works.

I’m not sure that being outside the US should be a barrier – the “What can I access without logging in?” portion of their Help page says
“All users can do the following without logging in:
Search across the entire collection;
Read and view works that are “full-view”;”
https://www.hathitrust.org/help_digital_library#NoLogin
and under Help-General it says
“Works in the public domain in HathiTrust are open to all researchers—whoever and wherever they may be. Content in HathiTrust is discoverable through online search technologies within the repository and through Google, with no authentication, login, or password required.”
You might click their Feedback link to ask them why you are unable to get access. It would really be useful to have access to Hathi, since it has important digitized sources not available elsewhere.