Dore Bible Illustrations

The Dore (pronounced like "door-ay") Bible illustrations are absolutely my favorite when it comes to the Scriptures.  (NOTE: I'm aware that this might make me seem like a nerd to even mention this, but after this blog, I hope to have you saying the same thing!)  I so respect him as an artist because he was willing to do what so few people were willing to do in his time (mid to late 1800's), and are still unwilling to do today.

In the 1800's there were LOTS of people publishing the Bible, and those Bibles often had illustrations included in them, but they were full of hyper-religious cheese ball drivel that thankfully are rarely seen anymore because they stunk.  (Unfortunately, there are still many publishers recreating all new hyper-religious and sterile pictures for Christian bookstores).  But Dore's pictures still speak loudly; he refused to sanguinate the Bible by excluding passages and acts of God that were offensive.  And the characters come to life! There's so much epic drama in each picture you get the sense of what was happening spiritually.  What I mean by that is this: in the natural, these scenes almost assuredly weren't so epic looking-a lot of it might have been very plain.  However, the drama of what God was doing spiritually in the Biblical narrative is every bit as weighty as Dore's illustrations make them out to be!

Besides all that, the man was simply a great illustrator (he did a lot with wood carvings).  During his day he was quite popular, and you can see his influence on a lot of illustrations today.  Worth looking at  for further study are his illustrations of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Crusades and Dante's Inferno and Paradise.  Once you start to recognize the look of his work, you'll see that he's all over the place in the older stuff.

BONUS: since all his work is so old, it's all public domain and thus can be used royalty free by anyone today.

TIP: click on the images to make them larger.

Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones.  Note how totally BOSS Ezekiel appears, with light around him and even a breeze on his cloak-it's a brilliant subtlety.  The narrative mentions the breath of God coming and giving life to the dry bones.  It's a small detail by Dore, but it is creatively faithful to the story.  Likewise, don't miss the character in the front right of the drawing.  It's as if he is rising up to praise God with arms outstretched.  

These are the lions of Samaria.  It's a little known passage out of 2 Kings 7:24-41.  Basically, when Israel was conquered and Assyria sent foreigners to live in the land, God judged them by sending lions to eat them.  A short yet violent blip in the whole of the Bible, but Dore realized it was visual gold.  

I will simply say that I love how people are clamoring to get to Jesus, and that Jesus (denoted by the posture of His hands and leaning of His body) is equally eager to get to the people.  I love it when artists show the heart of God with simple gestures of His hands (probably the best example is the detail of hands in Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam.)

Moses breaking the 10 Commandments after seeing Israel had sinned.  So EPIC!  Note that Dore puts God's stamp of approval on Moses' actions with the thunderbolt behind him.

Tongues of Fire resting on the disciples as they pray for the Holy Spirit to come.  

This is Lazarus coming out of the tomb.  The incredulity of the disciples (hand on top of the head) as Jesus raises the dead.  The use of light in this illustration is brilliant because everything is dark all around except for the center of the action-where God is at work!