 |
| 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 |