Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) - Ill-Fated Genius

Théodore Géricault
Head of a Guillotined Man
ca. 1818-19
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Théodore Géricault
Portrait Study of a Youth
ca. 1819-20
oil on canvas
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Théodore Géricault
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1818
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Théodore Géricault
Head of a Lion
ca. 1819
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Géricault
Portrait of an Artist in his Studio
ca. 1820
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

"Géricault is consistently called a genius who died on the brink of full creative flower.  His surviving works in every medium have always eluded categorization.  Independent and undogmatic, he acted with both impetuous engagement and rigorous discipline, moved easily from classical to modern subjects, and integrated scrupulous preliminary studies with inspired invention, no matter the subject.  He evolved a powerful coalition of solid draftsmanly structure, a light-catching, palpable three-dimensionality, and a painterly touch and palette.  Géricault became one of the following generation's most haunting artistic paradigms, the ill-fated engaged genius.  For many, his work signaled a brilliant path for the art of the future to negotiate between tradition and innovation."

– from a biographical essay be Suzanne Glover Lindsay in the Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Théodore Géricault
Classical Nudes
ca. 1814-15
wash drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Théodore Géricault
Parents mourning over their Dead Son
1819
wash drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Théodore Géricault
Entombment
ca. 1816-17
wash drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Théodore Géricault
Figure-studies (possibly for The Death of Hector)
ca. 1817
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Théodore Géricault
Satyr and Nymph
1817
wash drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Théodore Géricault
Scene of the Plague
ca. 1808-1812
wash drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Théodore Géricault
Wagon laden with Wounded Soldiers
1818
lithograph
Art Institute of Chicago

Théodore Géricault
The Tempest
ca. 1821-23
watercolor
Art Institute of Chicago

Théodore Géricault
Scène de Déluge
ca. 1818
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) - Romantic Machismo

Théodore Géricault
Horse Race
1816-17
oil on paper
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Théodore Géricault
Riderless Racers at Rome
1817
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Théodore Géricault
Riderless Horse Races, Rome
1817
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

"Whatever subject Géricault turned to – portraiture, scenes of military life, landscape, animals – he could transform from prose to poetry, from fact to symbol, thereby deeply unsettling the foundations of the traditional hierarchy of subject matter, which still reigned officially under the Bourbon Restoration.  One is again reminded of his genius when looking at Carle and Horace Vernets' picturesque documents [example directly below] of an event recorded by the many artists, and even by writers like Goethe, who visited Rome: the annual spectacle of a race of riderless horses down the Corso, the so-called corso dei barberi, which was illustrated as early as the late 1770s by a Scottish artist, David Allan.  But unlike Géricault, who, in a series of paintings of 1816-17, miraculously succeeded in recreating this tourist attraction as a poetic metaphor of literally unbridled passion momentarily restrained and then released by the disciplining forces of man, the paintings by the two Vernets (father and son) offer only a prosaic, if vivid account of a colorful pageant, a festa of rearing horses, holiday costumes, noisy crowds.  Their interpretation, that is, remains still within the conventional realm of a lower order of genre and animal painting, never elevating its subject to that symbolic power which both Géricault and Delacroix attained in even their most humble themes."  

– French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution, exhibition catalogue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1975)

Horace Vernet
Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses, Rome
1820
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Théodore Géricault
Capture of a Wild Horse
1817
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Théodore Géricault
Cattle Market
ca. 1818-19
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Harvard Art Museums

Théodore Géricault
Turkish Cavalier in Combat
ca. 1818
wash drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

 

Théodore Géricault
Warrior with a Spear
ca. 1816
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Théodore Géricault
Académie
before 1824
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Théodore Géricault
Shipwreck Survivor
ca. 1817-18
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Théodore Géricault
Académie
ca. 1815
wash drawing
British Museum

Théodore Géricault
Boxer Facing Right, and Men Wrestling
ca. 1818-19
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Théodore Géricault
Figure Studies for Raft of the Medusa
1818
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Théodore Géricault
Study for Raft of the Medusa
1818
wash drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Wood

Grinling Gibbons
Carved Cravat
ca. 1690
limewood
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Winged Sphinx
ca. 1790-1800
giltwood
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

after Donato Bramante
Model of Bramante's Tempietto
(Chiesa di San Pietro in Montorio, Rome)
ca. 1830-1900
walnut and pearwood
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Russian Maker
Bust of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov
before 1704
red pine
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

after designs by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Side Table with Rams' Heads
ca. 1760-70
giltwood, marble
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

from Huge Mirrors

This is an old apartment and therefore the mirrors are huge and ornate. They go with the high ornate ceilings. There's one such mirror in the living room and another in the bedroom. Both have intricately carved borders and a leafy crest on top. In the living room these have been painted over in white, but in the bedroom it's still the original gilt rococo. Both mirrors sit on top of fireplaces and are as big as tombs. I think the descriptive term for them is French Regency Baroque.

The mirror in the bathroom is pretty big too, and again somewhat ornate. And there are two other mirrors here as well. Not bad for a small, one-bedroom flat.

– Matthew Sweeney (2017)

Anonymous Spanish Maker
Reliquary Bust of St Francis Borgia
ca. 1624-50
painted and gilded wood
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Felipe Ydalgo Buenfiglio
Bust of Female Saint
1750s
painted wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Alonso Berruguete
St Mark
ca. 1560
painted and gilded wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

François Dieussart
William II, Prince of Orange
ca. 1650-75
painted wood
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Barbara Hepworth
Figure (Nyanga)
1959-60
elm wood
Tate Gallery

Barbara Hepworth
Tides I
1946
holly wood
Tate Gallery

Joaquín Torres-García
Wood Planes of Color
1929
painted wood
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Anonymous Japanese Maker
Guardian Animals
ca. 1250
wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anonymous Japanese Maker
Elephant
ca. 1250
wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Gilt Bronze

circle of Donatello
Sprite
ca. 1432
gilt bronze statuette
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous French Maker
Chenet (firedog) in Chinoiserie style
ca. 1750
gilt bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Georg Petel after Peter Paul Rubens
The Three Graces
ca. 1621
gilt bronze statuette
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giacomo Zoffoli
Elephant
before 1785
gilt bronze sculpture
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Triolet with Pachyderm

I don't have to outrun the elephant,
I just have to outrun you.
I don't have to race with a belligerent
ten-point-buck, outpace an elephant
in musth. I don't need to flee a wrathful firmament
or dance with a choleric jackboot.
I don't have to outrun the elephant.
I only have to outrun you.

– Hailey Leithauser (2014)

Hubert Gerhard
The Resurrection
(panel from the tomb of Christoph Fugger)
1581-84
gilt bronze relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Wall Lights
18th century
gilt bronze and porcelain
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Spanish Maker
St Jerome
ca. 1600
gilt bronze statuette
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anonymous French Maker
Mask
ca. 1890-1900
gilt bronze plaque
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pietro da Barga
Farnese Hercules
ca. 1576
gilt bronze statuette
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Matteo Bonuccelli
Lion 
(one of four copies acquired for Philip IV by Velázquez in Rome and based on the antique "Medici Lions")
ca. 1651
gilt bronze sculpture
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (designer)
Candlestick
ca. 1735-50
gilt bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous French Maker
Microscope 
ca. 1750
gilt bronze housing for instrument by Claude-Siméon Passemant
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bartolomeo Bellano
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1470-80
bronze statuette (gilt at an unknown later date)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bartolomeo Bellano
David with the Head of Goliath (detail)
ca. 1470-80
bronze statuette (gilt at an unknown later date)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York