Watchfulness and the Outlawed: Gustave Doré’s Gritty Portrait of a Family on the Fringe

This striking and unsentimental painting by Gustave Doré presents a rugged family on the margins—literally and figuratively. Under a brilliant, almost jarring blue sky, we see a woman clutching her child, flanked by two armed men (one alert, one pretending to nap), and two dogs that appear to be auditioning for the role of “nervous lookout #3.” They’re set against a brittle, sun-blasted hillside…