Gericault Guillotined Heads Drawings Besancon Musee De Sbeaux Arts

"The truly gifted individual does not fright obstacles, because he knows that he can surmount them; indeed they often are an additional asset; the fever they are able to excite in his soul is non lost; information technology even frequently becomes the crusade of the most astonishing productions."

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"Now I wanted and get constantly lost. It is in vain that I seek to agree on to something; nothing is solid, everything escapes me, everything deceives me. Our hopes and our remains are, down here, simply vain chimeras, and our successes mere ghosts that we remember we have grasped. If there is something certain for u.s. on earth, information technology is our sufferings. Suffering is existent, pleasures are only imaginary."

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"With the brush nosotros but tint, while the imagination alone produces color."

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"Is it non unsafe to have students written report together for years, copying the same models and approximately the aforementioned path?"

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Summary of Théodore Géricault

Géricault's short career had a huge bear on on the history of modern art and the evolution of French xix^thursday century painting in particular. His radical choice of subjects taken from gimmicky life, his fusion of classical forms with an atmospheric, painterly mode, his passion for horses, his attraction to sublime and horrific subjects, and his compassion for the weak and vulnerable in society make him a singularly complex artist, merely one who helped set the path for Romanticism's emphasis on emotion and subjectivity. His most famous piece of work, The Raft of the Medusa, was a watershed moment in the history of mod fine art, as it married the immediacy of electric current events and an eyewitness sensibility with the traditional, awe-inspiring format of a grand Salon painting. Much of Gericault's work relied on nifty observation, social awareness and at times a politically engaged view of the world around him. Indeed, a unique combination of realism and raw emotion can be seen in many of his works, including the late series of monomaniacs and his before "portraits" of guillotined heads.

Accomplishments

• Gericault's art was utterly contemporary in its attending to current events and the realities of the man condition. He depicted dramatic scenes from real life on a monumental scale and plant inspiration equally a draughtsman in the most humble subjects. This can be seen in his colossal canvas, The Raft of the Medusa, his lithographs of London's poor and his late portraits of the criminally insane.
• Though he absorbed the lessons of the Old Masters - Michelangelo was particularly important - Géricault'south apply of brisk, energetic brushstrokes and contrasting light furnishings created atmospheric scenes which bankrupt free from the refined Néoclassical style of painting.
• Much of Gericault's art typifies what nosotros at present think of every bit Romantic, with its attention to the exotic, the emotional, and the sublime. This can exist seen in role as a reaction to the earlier Neoclassicism of David and Ingres, which embodied Enlightenment values of order and reason. With Gericault, the individual artist's subjective, emotional response is what counts, a concept that would deport frontward into the twenty^th century.

Biography of Théodore Géricault

Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault was the only kid of wealthy, conservative parents. His father was a lawyer and his mother'due south family unit were tobacco growers. When he was iv his family unit moved to Paris, which immune Géricault to be educated in the almost prestigious schools. At age fifteen, his cartoon talent was recognized and he began to seriously study art.

Important Art by Théodore Géricault

Progression of Art

1812

Charging Chasseur

Equally reflected in the title, Géricault's Charging Chasseur is a large-scale portrait featuring an officer in the French Regal Guard charging away from the viewer. In the groundwork a battle scene suggests that retreat is underway. The officer is a existent life figure, Alexandre Dieudonné, who was a friend of the artist. He is depicted twisting backwards, sword set up, in a dramatically contorted pose.

Military figures were among the artist'southward favorite themes with this beingness one of his earliest and yet most important examples. The piece of work also utilizes another favored subject of the artist, the horse, which he returned to throughout his career. Part of what makes this painting interesting is the scene Géricault chose to draw. This is non a moment of military victory as was unremarkably depicted by the Neoclassical artists of the menstruation; rather everything about the narrative depicted implies that the battle is almost to be lost. The officer seems to look back in lamentable resignation. Instead of an idealized scene created using Ancient Roman or Greek motifs, as was common in the French Neoclassical manner, Géricault chose to describe a romanticized scene total of drama. The tension is enhanced by assuming color choices and varied calorie-free furnishings. His depiction reinforces the Romantic thought of the hero who, rather than seen triumphing, is shown struggling, heart-searching or lamentable in the confront of uncertain fate.

The choice of subject area could be seen as slightly ironic, given that his father had constitute a way to go him out of armed services service. Maybe the piece of work was an attempt to requite visual form to the military drama that Géricault then admired only had not yet seen kickoff manus. Whatever the work'due south motivations, it helped to launch Géricault'due south career and was well received when it was exhibited at the 1812 Paris Salon.

Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris

c.1816

Male 'académie' Seated and Seen from Backside

Géricault painted this work at the showtime of his career while training in the studio of the French University painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. This complex, atmospheric composition shows off the young artists appetite. The male person nude, viewed from behind, is twisted beyond the canvass. The tension in his intertwined anxiety unfurls progressively as the centre ascends towards the figure's right hand. The work is nighttime and brooding other than the whites and yellows of the figure's flesh.

While the depiction of the nude was zilch new - nude studies or académies were an essential function of an artist'southward grooming - the manner in which Géricault rendered the field of study already shows how revolutionary his approach to artmaking would be throughout his tragically short career. Conventional student studies of the male nude would have included a traditional, frontal pose set in a studio. This is abased entirely past Géricault who places the effigy in a landscape and experiments with a radical way of presenting the body that allows for an exploration of his already adult understanding of anatomy. The dramatic contrapposto of the male nude as well seems to presage the artist's later interest in Michelangelo and the expressive possibilities inherent in the trunk itself. In addition, the moody deployment of light and shade was different other student académies of the period. Through this work nosotros tin can conceptualize the development of Romanticism.

The work was non enthusiastically accustomed by Géricault'south teacher. Guérin was known to constantly criticize the artist for what he considered his unrealistic depiction of course and utilise of color. About these studies he chastised Géricault by stating, "your colors are not realistic ... all these chiaroscuro contrasts would pb me to think that yous always paint under the moonlight; as for your académies they resemble nature as much as a violin case resembles a violin."

Oil on canvas - Collection of Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, Rouen, France

c.1817-twenty

Cattle Market place

A small piece of work, Géricault'south Cattle Marketplace depicts the scene of a cattle market place in an Italian country setting. In the foreground are iii men, barely dressed, wrestling with cattle that are resisting their impending slaughter. In the right foreground ane of the men has managed to wrestle ane bull to the basis with the assistance of a dog, which he seems to be restraining from attack. In the background, beneath a bluish, cloud-filled sky a nude wall and a simple building are depicted, beyond which an arcadian landscape sets the scene.

Géricault's years in Italy, start in 1816, made a strong impression on the young artist. He enjoyed the scenes of Italian life and was intrigued by peasant life and sociology. That interest manifests itself in this painting which depicts a famous tourist allure, the buying and slaughtering of cattle in the outdoor marketplace nigh the Piazza del Popolo in Rome.

While notwithstanding young the artist shows his skill in capturing the human form in circuitous poses and compositions. In fact, the work shows off the artist'south eagerness to test and hone his skills. He has shifted the urban location to a land locale perchance to enhance the dramatic touch on of the scene; he experiments with classical elements by depicting the men nude in an Ancient Roman style that reflects the Classical emphasis of the artistic climate in Italy. Nonetheless, Géricault would not prefer this approach in his later works and so the painting is a rare example of a more classical style.

Oil on paper marouflé on canvas - Collection of Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts

1818

Evening

Géricault's Evening is a pastoral landscape painting of an idealized Italianate setting. Ii alone figures appear in the foreground of a central opening, from which the limerick guides the center down the river, then upward to the medieval village and finally across the viaduct and towards the sunset on the left.

This is one of a series of Italian landscapes each featuring a time of 24-hour interval. The paintings are perhaps a sort of visual declaration of Géricault's regret at leaving Italy to render habitation to Paris. These works combine the classical influence of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin with the emotional, dramatic mood indicative of the burgeoning Romantic style Géricault would soon embrace.

Rejected by his uncle, for whom they were fabricated (later he discovered Géricult's matter with his wife), the artist kept these paintings in his studio until his death. In a letter to a friend he wrote of his sadness during this period, stating "Now I wander and become constantly lost. It is in vain that I seek to concord on to something; nothing is solid, everything escapes me, everything deceives me." In these paintings Géricault began to use color, low-cal, and atmospheric compositions in order to express his state of heed.

Oil on canvas - Collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

1818-19

The Raft of the Medusa

The ballsy painting The Raft of the Medusa features a gruesome mass of figures adrift at sea, some expressionless, some struggling for life, in a tangled mass positioned on a crudely-fabricated raft. The only African figure on the raft waves a material at the pinnacle of a pile of a few men who are struggling to get the attending of a ship in the distance (located on the far right of the horizon line). The canvas of the raft is billowing in the wind while being tossed about a choppy bounding main below a stormy sky. Géricault paid great attention to the details in this piece of work. He even sketched severed body parts in order to brand the work as authentic as possible.

The subject depicted is the artist's dramatic interpretation of the events beginning on July 2, 1816, when a French navy frigate crashed on its manner the create colonies in West Africa. The appointed governor of the colony and the elevation ranking officers in the party left on the transport's vi lifeboats leaving the remaining 147 passengers to be crowded onto a hastily made raft. When the raft proved too cumbersome, in a horrific human action of cowardice and fear, the transport's leader cut the ropes to the raft. Left to fend for themselves the passengers eventually resorted to cannibalism. When rescued thirteen days afterward by a passing British ship, only fifteen men were left alive, of whom five died before they were able to achieve land. When the public learned of this, information technology became an international tragedy and a searing indictment of the current French government. The decision to paint a scene from contemporary history - one that was utterly of the moment - brought instant attending to this work, specially as Gericault translated information technology in a manner befitting classical history painting (large-scale, with heroic and tragic elements). The painting shocked the public and divided critics at the 1819 Salon. Even so, its powerful bailiwick matter and dramatic style attracted great attention to the artist, who was later on given the opportunity to exhibit The Raft in London and Dublin.

This work is a key example of Romantic painting. In creating the work Géricault showed a complication of composition and an almost unsettling portrayal of reality that differed from anything that had been seen before. Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830) borrows heavily from the fashion and composition while contemporary artists, including Frank Stella, Peter Saul, and Jeff Koons, take taken direct inspiration from this piece of work, which has achieved the status of an artistic icon.

Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris

c.1818-xx

Guillotined Heads

Gericault's Guillotined Heads presents a gruesome depiction of expiry and disuse. The female caput on the left has pallid white skin and airtight eyes, while the male head is depicted with its oral fissure and eyes open staring vacantly by the viewer. The jagged, crude marks on the cervix reveal the brutal and painful death these figures suffered at the guillotine. Here Gericault shows his vivid mastery of chiaroscuro, seen in the contrasts of dark and light throughout the composition. The loose brushstrokes used to render both the faces and the fabric add to the work'due south dramatic appeal.

Severed limbs and trunk parts are the most hit bailiwick in Géricault's oeuvre. The 5 works he created in this style are considered to be studies for the figures he would render in his well-nigh famous work, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819). Ever striving for actuality, the artist actually kept expressionless trunk parts of victims of the guillotine in his studio. Gériault'due south use of horrific subject thing was first and foremost an artistic means of pushing the boundaries, simply as well the vehicle of a political bulletin. By so clearly depicting the savagery involved in the utilize of the guillotine and presenting it in such a directly and confrontational way, Géricault is visually speaking out confronting this barbaric class of punishment which had been used widely during the Bourbon Restoration.

Oil on sheet - Drove of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden

c.1819-xx

Portrait of Mustapha

This is an important example of the many fine portraits Géricault created throughout his career. The subject was a real Turkish man named Mustapha who had been shipwrecked in France. The artist met him while walking the neighborhood streets of Paris and asked him to be his servant and model.

A cardinal aspect of the Romantic movement was the full embrace of exotic "oriental" themes in art. As with many artists of the period, Géricault was interested in the earth beyond western Europe. The artist desired to make a visit to the Holy State so that he could experience the Heart East in all its sounds, sights, and interactions, even so, he never did and so and therefore relied on what he read, the works he collected with related subjects, and nearly importantly, his servant Mustapha. Géricault led the way for Orientalist artists such every bit Eugène Delacroix, Léon Cognet, and Eugène Fromentin, whose travels in Northern Africa formed an essential role of their inspiration.

Oil on canvass - Collection of Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon, France

1821

The Piper

The Piper provides a detailed rendering of a blind human being wearing ragged clothes including an oversized, worn coat and boots. He plays a bagpipe as he walks through an empty and run-down London street, alone except for a small canis familiaris who walks behind him tethered to a leash.

While perchance best known for his paintings, Géricault was as well a great draughtsman and lithographer. This work is an important case of the touch that the creative person's 1819 and 1820 trips to England had on his career. While he greatly enjoyed the leisure activities and interactions British loftier lodge had to offer, he was also struck by the wide disparity that existed between the wealthy and the poor. He created a series of lithographs that item the struggles and desperation faced past London's poor.

Lithograph - Drove of Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France

c.1821-23

The Monomaniac of Gambling

The Monomaniac of Gambling features an elderly, haggard adult female, with an sick-fitting brown coat. The white of her shirt, barely visible beneath her glaze, matches the scarf tied around her caput. A crutch resting in her lap is positioned in the lower right of the sail.

The painting is from a serial of portraits Géricault fabricated before his decease depicting mentally ill men and women who had succumbed to various vices. Here, an insane elderly female has suffered the furnishings of a gambling addiction. Every bit a issue of her gambling she lost her money and security and was pushed over the brink of sanity.

Many reasons accept been proposed equally to why Géricault may accept created these works, including his own failing mental wellness, the depression he was suffering from, or perhaps simply a commission past the psychiatrist Dr Georget. The portraits are of import examples of the creative person grappling with social bug in his art. They also provide a fine example of the Romantic approach to artmaking. The entire piece of work is rendered in shades of loosely applied browns which add to the overall impression of dejection and misfortune. Even so, a glow from an unknown light source illuminates the woman'south face. Every bit a viewer we are drawn to her and can see the vacant stare we acquaintance with the mentally ill. The influence of the artist on younger Romantic painters can be seen in Eugène Delacroix'due south depiction of the mentally ill Italian poet Tasso in the Hospital of Santa Anna, Ferrara (1824). The Monomaniac series directly influenced contemporary artist Marlene Dumas, who created ii similar portraits in her unique fashion - Obsessiver Neid (2011) and Militaristischer Monomane (2013) - inspired by Géricault's The Monomaniac of Green-eyed (The Hyena) (1821-23) and The Monomaniac of Military Grandeur (1821-23).

Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Influenced past Artist

• 

  Michelangelo

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  Caravaggio

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  Francisco Goya

• Pierre-Narcisse Guérin

• Anne-Louis Girodet

• Laurent-Théodore Biett

• James William Bullock

• Pierre-Marie-Alexandre Dumoutier

• James William Bullock

• Charles Clément

• Théodore Lebrun

• Louis Viardot

Useful Resources on Théodore Géricault

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Content compiled and written by Jessica DiPalma

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

"Théodore Géricault Artist Overview and Assay". [Cyberspace]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Jessica DiPalma
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/gericault-theodore/

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