Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré was born in strasbourg on the 6th of Jnauary 1832. Doré was a world famous 19th century illustrator, Although he illustrated over 200 books.Gustave Dore was a prolific engraver, artist, illustrator, and sculptor, working primarily as a wood and steel engraver. He produced over 100,000 sketches in his lifetime. Even though he was an untrained, self-taught artist, who never used a live model, and who could not sketch from nature, his work is considered some of the most important in the entire engraving art world.
In Dore eyes he must have seen London as a over populated area. He would have thought that the people who lived there were claustrophobic, that they would have felt like they were traped becausew there were so many people living there.
Over London by rail. Engraving. View of the London slums by Gustave Dore from
'Londre a Pilgrimage', first published in 1872. This illustration is a bird's
eye view of the slums of London, it shows the poor and overcrowed conditions in
which the poor lived in Victorian times, where "There is a desperate, ferocious
levity in the air... they (the poor) are the workless of a work-a day London -
born in idleness to die in the workhouse, or upon bare boards."
The people who lived in London at the time would have thought that it was utopia. They would have found it desirable to live there, But in Doré perspective he would have seen London as dystopia. Doré would have found it very undisirable to live there because of the over population and the terrible conditions that the people lived in.