Which French artist is famous for illustrating Don Quixote in the 19th century?

The French artist famous for illustrating Don Quixote in the 19th century is Gustave Doré.

Doré created a celebrated series of illustrations for Don Quixote in 1863. His dramatic black-and-white compositions emphasize the novel’s contrasts: heroic fantasy beside dusty roads, imposing imagined giants beside ordinary objects, and grand adventure beside comic humiliation.

His images helped shape the visual identity of Cervantes’s characters for later readers. Don Quixote appears tall, angular, and dreamily determined, while Sancho Panza is often rendered as his shorter, earthier counterpart. Doré illustrated episodes including the windmills, the sheep mistaken for armies, and the knight’s many encounters with supposedly enchanted figures.

Doré was one of the most prolific illustrators of the 19th century and also worked on major editions of works by Dante, Charles Perrault, and John Milton. Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, and other artists also created Don Quixote-related images, but they are not the answer to this question: Doré is the artist especially associated with the novel’s landmark 19th-century illustrated edition.