four pieces of wood with different designs on them on a white surface
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95 - [DORÉ].– LA FONTAINE (Jean de)
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Estimate €800 - €1,500
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Description
[DORÉ].– LA FONTAINE (Jean de) Set of 4 plates for the illustrations of the Fables. 4 metal plates, mounted on wood and varnished (24.1 x 19.4 x 2.4 cm). A fine set of 4 original plates by Gustave Doré to illustrate La Fontaine’s Fables, published in 1867. – The Little Fish and the Fisherman (engraved by Bertrand). – The Frogs Who Wanted a King (engraved by Dumont). – The Cat and the Old Rat (engraved by Dumont). – The Lion in Love (engraved by Pannemaker).   ‘Doré offers a highly distinctive, sombre and tragic vision of the work: he does not seek to provoke laughter, but to evoke terror and pity – not, of course, in every single plate, but in enough of them to give the collection as a whole its own distinctive tone. […] Doré found in the storehouse of the world the equivalent of the grotesque figures and chimerical, unnatural hybridisations that Hieronymus Bosch drew from the wellspring of his imagination to populate his paintings. But this fantasy is by no means gratuitous and remains subordinate to the fable it is intended to interpret.’ (BnF essentiels, ‘La Fontaine’s Fables illustrated by Gustave Doré’, online).   From a technical point of view, 19th-century publishing had become accustomed, for large print runs, to creating metal plates from the original woodblocks. The techniques of stereotyping, or gillotage (a process developed by Firmin Gillot in 1850), were used to produce more durable printing plates and to cater for possible reprints. Thus, the contract for the second edition of the Œuvres de Rabelais (1873) states that Doré is responsible for the entire iconographic section and divides the work amongst his engravers (he does not engrave himself), ‘but the wooden matrices and the metal stereotypes made from them to facilitate reprints remain the property of the publishers.’ (‘Doré: The Power of the Imagination’, Musée d’Orsay website).   It is therefore these stereotypes, made from the original woodblocks – which have presumably been destroyed – that we are offering. These plates, whether made of wood or metal, were generally destroyed by the publishers after a certain period of time, which explains the rarity of these items on the market.
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About the sale Books, Manuscripts & Antique Engravings, including the José Luis Dotti Library
Auction location
Auction time 09/23/2026 at 2:30 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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