The last mention of a drop curtain in “Well-known Drop Curtains in Philadelphia Theatres” mentioned Gustave Dore. The article was published “The Philadelphia Inquirer on Dec. 18, 1894.
“The famous curtain, ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ said to have been painted by Dore, which for many years formed the chief attraction at the South Broad Street Theatre, was taken down by Mr. McCaul in 1880 and painted out.” Nothing else is mentioned of the composition or artist. I decided to do a little digging and discovered a few other mentions about Dore’s drop curtain.
In 1878, the “Pittsburgh Post” reported, “A specimen of Gustave Dore’s early work may be seen in Philadelphia, in the shape of a drop curtain of the Broadway Theatre. It was painted for the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, in Paris, and was brought to this country by the Kiralfys. It is unusually handsome” (23 Feb. 1878, page 1).
In 1879, the “Wisconsin State Journal” reported, “Gustave Dore was born in Alsace and is 48 years of age. He is a brunette – dark-eyed, black haired – and is a bachelor. It is not generally known outside of Philadelphia that the drop-curtain at the Broad Street theatre was painted by this artist. It is the only curtain Dore ever painted” (Madison, 9 Dec, 1879, page 1).
The only other scenery that I came across noting Dore’s scenic art work appeared the “Boston Globe” during 1877. The article reported, “The revival of ‘Robert le Diable” at the Grand Opera is chiefly noteworthy for the magnificent scenery which has been given the production. The forest scene in the second act by Gustave Dore, is pronounced very fine, and the cloister scene in the last act a marvel of artistic skill” (13 Jan 1877, page 2).
Much has been written about Dore as an artist, with very little mention of any scenic work. Only three years after his drop curtain at the Broad Street Theatre was removed in Philadelphia, the artist passed away. “The Daily Republican” published an article about Dore’s passing, reporting,
“The best known artist of modern times, Paul Gustave Dore, died on the twenty-third of January 1883. He had survived his extraordinary popularity, which was due rather to fertility and daring originality of genius than to superiority of conception and thorough work, which give enduring value to artistic productions. During his short life he made about fifty thousand designs founded on a remarkable diversity of subjects. He developed surprisingly capacity in various departments of art, but did not attain an enduring distinction in either. His work was too diffuse, his undertakings too numerous, to give him more than ample income and an evanescent eminence. That chapter in the history of art covering Dore’s period of activity will not record his name among immortal master.
Dore was born in Strasbourg, January 6, 1833. He was taken to Paris before his school-boy days, and educated in the capital, at Lycee Charlemagne. The bent of his genius was disclosed early in life. His first lithographs were produced when he was only eleven years of age. When he was fifteen his series of sketches entitled ‘The labors of Hercules’ was exhibited at Paris. His earliest efforts as an artist yielded him a precarious income, made chiefly by illustrating cheap books and illustrated periodicals. In 1848 certain sketches made by him in pen and ink, were exhibited in the Solon, Paris. Six years later his designs for ‘The Wandering Jew’ gave him a reputation in other countries beside France. In the same year, 1854, he produced the most powerful designs originated by him throughout his whole career, namely, those for Balzac’s ‘Contes Drolatiques.” His pictures illustrating Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ were made in 1865, in which and the subsequent year, he illustrated the Bible. In 1866 and the two subsequent years, he illustrated Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King.” ‘Christ Leaving the Prætorium,’ a gigantic picture, was exhibited at the Solo, 1876, and in the same year and place, his ‘Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem.’ His last seven years of the prodigious activity, which terminated only with his death, were I part bestowed on the illustration of Shakespeare. The disease which carried him off was inflammation of the throat, a result of a severe cold.
The deceased artist lived a simple, quiet life with his mother. He was a bachelor, married, as he expressed it, to his mother and his art. He would facetiously ask his friends, when they spoke of his wifeless condition: ‘Must a man be a Turk to prove he is of a domestic turn.’ The two wives he had were enough for him. He was a strongly-built, athletic man, and in his youth excelled in feats of strength and agility. His complexion and eyes were exceedingly dark, and his hair raven black. Visitors to his studio, which was the best provided in all Paris, found him in one of two contrasting moods – either in frolicsome, frank, childlike Dore who was irresistibly amiable, or a saturnine, morbid being, ashamed of himself and an affliction to his friends. In a review of his life the necessity is to deplore the fact, that Dore’s attainments as an artist were vastly disproportioned to the originality, versatility and power of his genius” (The Daily Republican, Monongahela, Pennsylvania, 5 Feb. 1883, page 4).
To be continued…
