Géricault, Théodore

Géricault, Théodore (b Rouen, 26 Sept. 1791; d Paris, 26 Jan. 1824). French painter and lithographer, one of the prime movers and most original figures of Romanticism. He studied in Paris with Carle Vernet and Pierre Guérin, but was influenced more by making copies of the Old Masters in the Louvre, developing in particular a passion for Rubens. In 1816–17 he visited Italy and there became an enthusiastic admirer of Michelangelo and the Baroque. After his return to Paris he began work on the picture for which he is most famous, The Raft of the Medusa (Louvre, Paris), which caused a sensation at the 1819 Salon; although it was awarded a medal, it created a furore both on account of its realistic treatment of a horrific event and because of its political implications (it depicts the ordeal of the survivors of the shipwreck of the Medusa in 1816, a disaster ascribed by some to government incompetence). The huge picture, which was remarkably original in treating a contemporary event with epic grandeur, also attracted great attention in England, where Géricault spent the years 1820–2 (more than 50,000 visitors paid to see it when it was exhibited in London). During his stay in England he painted jockeys and horse races (Derby at Epsom, 1821, Louvre) and was one of the first to bring English painting to the attention of French artists (he was particularly enthusiastic about Bonington and Constable).

Géricault was a passionate horseman and his death at the age of 32 was hastened by a riding accident. In his temperament and lifestyle as well as his work he ranks as an archetypal Romantic artist. His tempestuous career lasted little more than a decade and in that time he displayed a meteoric and many-sided genius (his teacher Guérin said that he had ‘the stuff of several painters’ in him). His love of stirring action, his sense of swirling movement, his energetic handling of paint, and his taste for the macabre were all to become features of Romanticism. He was, at the same time, forward-looking in his realism: he made studies from corpses and severed limbs for the Raft of the Medusa and painted an extraordinary series of portraits of mental patients in the clinic of his friend Dr Georget, one of the pioneers of humane treatment for the insane (A Kleptomaniac, c.1822–3, Mus. B.-A., Ghent). His work had enormous influence, most notably on Delacroix.