Gustave Doré, The Raven, 1884

Gustave Doré, The Raven, 1884

Gustave Doré was a prolific artist and illustrator who worked primarily as a wood and steel engraver. In 1884, Doré produced 26 steel engravings for a special illustrated edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem ‘The Raven.’ This refined and beautifully haunting portrayal of the poem’s narrator mourning his dead lover indicates the artist’s sensibilities towards love, death and the heavenly woman. The softened lines and low key chiaroscuro of Doré’s illustration successfully captures the mood of Poe’s work: 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”