- Despite his short life, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.
- While in London, Géricault witnessed urban poverty, made drawings of his impressions, and published lithographs based on these observations which were free of sentimentality. He associated much there with Charlet, the lithographer and caricaturist.
- Géricault's last efforts were directed toward preliminary studies for several epic compositions, including the Opening of the Doors of the Spanish Inquisition and the African Slave Trade.
- In 1821, while still in England, he painted The Derby of Epsom.
- Théodore Géricault was a French painter and lithographer, whose best-known painting is The Raft of the Medusa.
- His bronze figure reclines, brush in hand, on his tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, above a low-relief panel of The Raft of the Medusa.
- Géricault's first major work, The Charging Chasseur, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1812, revealed the influence of the style of Rubens and an interest in the depiction of contemporary subject matter. This youthful success, ambitious and monumental, was followed by a change in direction: for the next several years Géricault produced a series of small studies of horses and cavalrymen.
- After his return to France in 1821, Géricault was inspired to paint a series of ten portraits of the insane. These were the patients of a friend, Dr. Étienne-Jean Georget (a pioneer in psychiatric medicine), with each subject exhibiting a different affliction.[11] There are five remaining portraits from the series, including Insane Woman.
- Géricault was educated in the tradition of English sporting art by Carle Vernet and classical figure composition by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a rigorous classicist who disapproved of his student's impulsive temperament while recognizing his talent. Géricault soon left the classroom, choosing to study at the Louvre, where from 1810 to 1815 he copied paintings by Rubens, Titian, Velázquez and Rembrandt.
- Rome itself inspired the preparation of a monumental canvas, the Race of the Barberi Horses, a work of epic composition and abstracted theme that promised to be "entirely without parallel in its time". However, Géricault never completed the painting and returned to France.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content