Age of Revolution
Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)
French Romanticism painter.
Théodore Géricault compressed a Romantic career into little more than a decade. Born in Rouen in 1791, trained in Paris, he died there in 1824 after a riding accident and a long decline. The Raft of the Medusa, the Charging Chasseur, and the Epsom Derby are the public monuments of a painter who also made private studies of the insane.
The Raft (1818–19) turned a contemporary shipwreck and scandal into a Salon machine of dying and signaling bodies. The 1812 Chasseur is Napoleonic energy at full gallop. The 1821 Derby, painted in England, freezes horses off the ground — motion as a new problem. Delacroix, younger and longer-lived, took the Romantic lesson from these pictures.
Lorenz Eitner's monograph is the standard modern life and catalogue. The intent documented there is not mood for its own sake but modern history and modern bodies under extreme strain.
The words the record keeps using: urgent, bodily, stormy, modern, strained, compassionate.
At a glance
- Lived 1791–1824
- Origin French
- Worked in London, Paris
- Era Age of Revolution
- Movements Romanticism
- Mediums Oil on canvas
- Techniques Chiaroscuro, Impasto
Works in the archive
- The Charging Chasseur, 1812 (Musée du Louvre, Paris (INV 4885))
An officer of the Imperial horse guards turns in the saddle as the horse rears — Napoleonic energy as a single diagonal of man and mount. Shown at the Salon of 1812, it made the young Géricault famous. - The Raft of the Medusa, 1818 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Survivors of the frigate Méduse crowd a raft, some dead, some signaling a distant ship. A contemporary scandal — incompetent command, abandoned soldiers — is raised to the scale of history painting. It is the founding… - The Derby at Epsom, 1821 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Four racehorses stretch in a flying gallop that later photography would prove impossible — all hooves off the ground. Painted in England in 1821, it is Géricault's study of speed as a modern subject.
What was said
Eitner's monograph presents Géricault as the painter of modern extremity — the Medusa scandal, imperial cavalry, English racing — a short career that gave French Romanticism its first public monuments.
The Raft is read as contemporary history raised to epic scale: a documented wreck and political scandal reconstructed from studies of the living and the dead so that the Salon would have to look at it.
The Epsom Derby is cited as a study of speed — horses designed in a flying gallop — a modern subject Géricault took from English sporting art and recast in his own constructive paint.
Lineage
Passed on to Eugène Delacroix
What would Théodore make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Théodore Géricault", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Théodore · Keep a life moment the way Théodore would · Pictures made after Théodore