Life and Works of Theodore Gericault
Ariunaa Bayraa
Theodore Gericault was born in 1791, in Rouen, France and moved to Paris when he was a young boy to study painting. He was a renowned painter and lithographer in his time, an artist whose talents showed at a very early stage of his life. His created his most famous masterpiece named Raft of Medusa when he was only 25. Most, importantly he was one of the pioneers of French Romanticism. He was a person of flamboyant and passionate character, and loved horses. Unfortunately he died in 1824, when he was only 33 years old, due to a spinal injury caused by a fall from a horse.
He had a number of influencers in the realm of painting throughout his life as an artist. Earlier in his career, he was taught by Carle Vernet, Pierre Guerin, and passionately admired the works of Peter Paul Rubens. These men invariably influenced his works. On the other hand, Gericault himself greatly influenced one of the other major artists of French Romanticism, the infamous Eugene Delacroix.
In 1816 and 1817, he lived in Italy—the cities of Florence and Rome, in particular—and fell in love with the works of great Michelangelo and Italian Baroque arts. He undertook a project named Race of the Riderless Horse, a heroic fresco composition, (which was in fact never completed) depicting a dangerous race that was an annual event in Italy at that time.
He both influenced and got influenced by English painters when he visited England to display his most famous work, the Raft of Medusa. During his stay there, he painted jockeys and horse races and was one of the first to bring English painting to the attention of French artists.
In general, the most distinctive and the greatest virtues of Gericault’s works are his display of macabre realism, drama, and an outstanding sense of movement. The word “macabre” means, “suggesting the horror of death and decay, gruesome;” and “constituting or including a representation of death” according to the dictionary.
There are three main themes apparent in Gericault’s works. As previously mentioned, Gericault was extremely passionate about horsemanship. This is the origin of the earliest and first theme in his works of art. Gericault’s painting The Charging Chasseur is the most representative of this theme. Charging Chasseur is one of the most famous of his works, in which, the artist masterfully created a sense of movement and gust.
The second main theme of Gericault’s works is illustrated by Raft of Medusa, the most notorious of his works. The theme is that of macabre realism and it shows an infamous catastrophic shipwreck of the French ship Medusa. He also meticulously painted still life pictures of dead criminals in the morgue—separate parts of the corpses like the head or the hand—before he got to work on the Raft of Medusa. This sounds quite creepy, but viewers can observe the powerful impact Raft of Medusa can have if they take the time to see the painting.
He faced a problem when he introduced the painting at first in France, because the shipwreck of Medusa was caused by the irresponsibility and incompetence of some government officials. Thus the subject matter was politically very sensitive. Government officials felt threatened and infuriated by Gericault’s realistic and frightening treatment of the incident. So he took the work to England, and the response of the English people were of intense excitement and exhilaration.
The third theme in Gericault’s works is that of insanity. He realistically depicted people with mental problems, with each subject suffering from a different affliction of insanity. His major works in this arena are The Madwoman, and the portrait of The Kleptomaniac. The first one depicts an old woman suffering from obsessive envy, and the other one depicts a man suffering from kleptomania, or an obsessive impulse to steal regardless of economic need.
I hope you found the information about his life and works interesting. I personally think that Gericault was a very interesting man with a fascinating and unique taste in art. For further reference, please visit the web-pages listed below.
Sources Consulted
Harold Osborne, Marc Jordan"Géricault, Théodore"The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.American University in Bulgaria.23 March 2006 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t118.e1013
"Géricault, Théodore"The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Ed. Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.American University in Bulgaria.23 March 2006
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t3.e949
"Géricault, Théodore"The Oxford Dictionary of Art. Ed. Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.American University in Bulgaria.23 March 2006
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t2.e1387
"Géricault, Théodore"Encyclopedia Britannica. American University in Bulgaria. 23 March 2006http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9036547?query=gericault&ct=eb
"Géricault, Théodore"Wikipedia. 23 March 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gericault
1