La Rue de la Vieille Lanterne: The Suicide of Gérard de Nerval
1855
Medium
Lithograph in black on light gray China paper laid down on white wove paper
Dimensions
Image/chine: 50.2 × 34.3 cm (19 13/16 × 13 9/16 in.); Sheet: 57.6 × 40 cm (22 11/16 × 15 3/4 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
105494
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Gerard de Nerval was a French poet who anticipated the Symbolist movement in his fascination with dreams as a reflection of the supernatural. Destitute and distraught over a thwarted love, he hung himself from a lantern post in 1855. Gustave Doré’s lithograph provides a fitting pictorial memorial to the poet's hallucinatory vision and tragic end. Never pulled in an edition, the lithograph is very rare; it marks the culmination of Doré’s work in the medium. After 1855, the young artist began to r...
About the Artist
Gustave Doré · 1832–1883
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was a French artist who became the most celebrated and prolific illustrator of the nineteenth century, creating iconic visual interpretations of world literature that remain definitive to this day. Born in Strasbourg, he showed extraordinary precocious talent, publishing his first lithographs at age fifteen and securing a contract with a Paris publisher while still a teena...