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Victor Hugo at the Morgan Library is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

Poe Would Have Been Proud

The Daily Pic: Victor Hugo painted scenes of Gothic horror that he never set down in words.

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(The Morgan Library & Museum Thaw Collection, 2010, photo by Schecter Lee)
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This amazing vision of romantic decay was not made last week by a genius illustrator, but by the great French novelist Victor Hugo, working with ink and brush in 1857. It's now on display in the Morgan Library's show of new acquisitions. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it took a literary type to craft the definitive Gothic-novel imagery.

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