Paul Gustave Dore, a French artist, born in Strasburg, Jan. 10, 1833. He early showed a passion for drawing, and his father sent him to the lyceums of Strasburg and Bourg. When only 11 years of age he published his first lithographs. The next year he was brought to Paris, and entered the Charlemagne lyceum, and in 1848 he published his first series of sketches, the "Labors of Hercules," in the Journal pour rire, for which paper he drew regularly from this time. In 1854 ho illustrated the works of Rabelais. He drew many of the illustrations for the Journal pour tons from its foundation in 1856, and in that year illustrated Balzac's Contes drolatiques and the legend of the wandering Jew. Among the most prominent of the numerous works he has since illustrated are Montaigne (1857), Taine's Voyage aux Pyrenees (1859), Dante (1861-'8), Chateaubriand's Atala (1862), "Don Quixote" (1863), Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1865), the Bible (1865-'6), Tennyson's "Idyls of the King" (1866-'8), and La Fontaine's fables (1867). In 1853 he began to exhibit oil paintings, including "Two Mothers," "Alsatian Women," "A Mountebank who has stolen a Child," and some landscapes.

The most noted of his pictures are scenes from Dante, especially his "Paolo and Francesca di Rimini," the battles of the Alma and Inkerman, the "Rebel Angels cast down" (1866), the "Gambling Hall at Baden-Baden," the "Neophyte" (1868), the "Triumph of Christianity," and "Christ leaving the Praetorium," which last measures 30 ft. by 20. It is said that he has executed over 45,000 designs.