Victor Hugo, The cheerful castle (detail)

Start here: Victor Hugo's drawings

Published on 21 February 2025

Find out more about the extraordinary artistic career of French writer and statesman Victor Hugo.

Victor Hugo, The Town of Vianden Seen Through a Spider’s Web — Brown ink and wash, and blue watercolour over graphite on paper. 25.5 x 30.3 cm
Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo.

Private artist

When Victor Hugo died in 1885, aged 83, over two million people lined the streets of Paris to see his funeral procession. They were paying tribute to a man who was famous in France and around the world as a writer, public intellectual and statesman.

Many of Hugo’s admirers wouldn’t have been aware of Hugo’s private love of drawing.

Throughout his life, Hugo always drew – caricatures to entertain friends, sketchbooks kept on his travels, ink drawings of imaginary castles, and dramatic stormy seas during his period of exile in Guernsey.

His drawings, later admired by artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Antony Gormley, are rarely on display in the UK. This exhibition brings together some of the finest.

Victor Hugo, La Tour des Rats — Pen and brown ink wash over graphite pencil, black ink and charcoal on paper. 28.5 x 44.8 cm
Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo.

Travelling sketcher

In the 1830s, Hugo began to make satirical caricatures, which he shared in private with friends and family. He also kept travel journals in which he sketched and wrote about the places he visited.

He paid particular attention to architectural details, especially castles and churches.

As his approach to drawing developed, Hugo began to experiment with different materials. He used ink washes, graphite pencil and charcoal to produce works such as the La Tour des Rats, where valley, sky and sea loom in monochrome.

Victor Hugo, The cheerful castle — Pen, brown ink and wash, black ink and wash and crayon on cardboard. 15.8 x 22.2 cm
Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maison de Victor Hugo.

Castle lover

Hugo had a lifelong obsession with castles. Although he drew these from life, he increasingly produced drawings of imaginary castles, from the sunlit The Cheerful Castle in which an elaborate collection of towers and turrets shine against a clear sky, to the atmospheric The Castle with the Cross where the building looms as an inky black silhouette.

Hugo’s fascination with architecture extended to his own home. Having been exiled from France for being an outspoken critic of Emperor Napoléon III, Hugo eventually settled in Guernsey. He completely renovated his home there, Hauteville House, to his own design. He added a ‘look out’ to the top floor with panoramic views of the sea, made drawings for the large fireplace in the dining room and, drew and painted directly onto picture frames and panelling or wooden panels throughout the house.

Victor Hugo, Ecce Lex — Pen and brown ink wash, graphite pencil, black ink and charcoal on paper. 50.8 x 34.9 cm
Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo.

Political engraver

Hugo strongly opposed the death penalty. After the execution by hanging of convicted murderer John Tapner in Guernsey, Hugo made a series of drawings of a hanged man, including Ecce Lex (meaning ‘behold the law’).

Later Hugo appealed - unsuccessfully - to the United States of America to pardon John Brown, an abolitionist who had been sentenced to death in Virgina on charges of treason, murder and conspiracy to incite a slave insurrection.

Hugo’s brother-in-law Paul Chenay made print reproductions of his earlier Ecce drawings, which were published with a new title, John Brown, and circulated in protest at Brown’s execution.

Victor Hugo, The Vision Ship or The Last Struggle — Pen, brown ink and wash on paper. 19.2 x 25.3 cm
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits.

Ocean man

The natural world and the ocean especially was a major source of inspiration for Hugo’s writings and drawings, particularly during his exile in the Channel Islands. It was here that he wrote The Toilers of the Sea, the story of a fishing community on Guernsey. In the novel there are stormy seas, shipwrecks and sea monsters – subjects which appear in Hugo’s drawings from the same period.

During his wide-ranging career, Hugo was sometimes referred to as “ocean man” – a term he coined himself to refer to the male literary geniuses he admired. “Looking at these minds,” Hugo writes, “is the same thing as to look at the ocean.”