The Doré Bible Gallery
(1879 - Fine Art Publishing)

(by Talbot W. Chambers) Wow, this is a hard one. This book was first produced in the century before the last one. You might like the aspect that for the 100 chosen art-pieces there is an accompanying commentary page that encapsulates the Bible story that the illustration accompanied, with elaboration, if needed, of the more lesser-known aspects of it. This commentary frequently draws notice to narrative or stylistic details of the art piece itself. Then I would certainly say to ignore the older editions (one of which is all that I'm looking at). Because of paper/printing-quality, every couplet is protected by a pair of blank pages - yes, that's right - commentary page, followed by print, followed by two blanks pages, multiplied by 100. I have to believe that the modern editions have resolved that problem and are more concise (thinner) volumes. I'm also going to say that in my older edition I'm less than satisfied with the quality of the reproduction (being perhaps due to age), everything looking darker that than it should, losing much of the intended greytone subtleties. With that said, many of the other comments I've seen don't speak highly of the ultimate reproduction-quality of the newer editions either. Anyway, I'll add here that four of the images are longer and then turned sideways. Don't confuse this book with the one entitled THE DORÉ GALLERY OF BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS. Finally, there's a good chance that, for you, simply the better collection to have is Dover's THE DORÉ BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS which has all 241 artworks that the artist created for Bible editions (though without any explication).

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