DORE’S NEW PICTURES.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2152, 18 January 1881, Page 3

DORE’S NEW PICTURES.

The Doro Gallery in New Bond street, which has been long the resort of a certain section of the art-loving public, has recently received two farther acquisitions from the prolific brush of Gustave Dore. The larger work —an immense canvas, 17ft 6in high by 26ft Gin long—represents “ Moses before Pharoah,” in the tenth plague of Egypt. The Egyptian king, surrounded by the members of his court and servants, is pictured standing at the entrance of his palace, on the summit of a flight of steps, and before him are Moses and Aaron, whom he has summoned to his presence in all haste, in order to bid them, with the children of Israel, get forth from among his people. Around are many prostrate forms—mothers stretched in agony of sorrow iupon [the ground, and near them the dead bodies of their first-born. The conception of the subject, like most of the master’s works, shows grand imaginative power, and tbe grouping and arrangement of the figures is dramatically impressive 5 the splendour of Pharoah and his followers in their magnificent costumes being in suggestive contrast to the sombrely-clad figure of the man of God, Moses—ho who had but now delivered the terrible fiat of the Almighty, causing woe throughout the whole land of Egypt. The exact time when the scene is presented to the spectator would appear to bo the moment when Pharoah, aroused by the cry of his people, “ rose up in the night” and called for Moses and Aaron,fas related in Exodus xii., 31, 32, and the effect which is made to exhibit the group of the king and his people in light, whilst his smitten and sorrowing subjects are inappropriate shadow, is cleverly managed. In thn background the architecture of the palace is also very finely executed. Thus much in the way of commendation may be safely said ; but the exceedingly mannered treatment of the figures, their unnatural contortions and want of inviduality of character, are, as is usually the case in most of 'M. Dore’s works, greatly to be regretted, and occasion the wish that, at least in this respect, the artist would paint lees and study more. The picture has been upon the easel from 1878.