Peddling for Profit

Chapter 5 moves to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, where the entrepreneurial spirit and penchant for spectacle led to some of the most significant and idiosyncratic recuperations of Doré’s work and the most compelling evidence for the critical place biblical imagery has maintained in modern life. A combination of practical factors (the lack of international copyright laws, for instance, and the highly successful tour of works from the Doré Gallery) led to widespread appropriation of Doré’s imagery in a plethora of contexts, including traditional media such as stained glass and book illustration, as well as more recent developments such as the magic lantern. In the United States, the proliferation of Christian denominations and capitalist culture alike are uniquely bound up with the circulation of Doré’s images.