Theodore Géricault is a painter French born the September 26th 1791 with Rouen, dead the January 26th 1824 with Paris. Incarnation of the romantic artist , his life short and tormented gave rise to many myths.

Biography

Géricault is born in an easy family from Rouen, originating in the English Channel, with St Cyr of Bailleul where a locality éponyme " the Géricault" hotel; always exist. His/her father, Georges, magistrate and rich landowner, will hold a tobacco factory thereafter. His/her mother, Louise Caruel, go down from a rich Norman family. The painter will not know in this direction not money problems (except at the end of its life, after having made bad placements), and will not have the concern of selling his works to live. That explains the freedom which one finds in his tables. About 1796, the Géricault family settles in Paris and Theodore made her studies with the Imperial College (today Louis-the-Large).

Géricault studies in the workshops of the painter Carle Vernet, specialist in scenes of hunting. It become acquainted there with his/her son, Horace Vernet. He will study then with Pierre-Narcisse Guerin before being registered, the February 5th 1811, with the École of the Art schools of Paris. In 1814, Géricault éprend of Alexandrine Caruel, the young wife of her maternal uncle, Jean-Baptiste Caruel. This connection, which will last several years and will produce a son, Hippolyte Georges, proves to be disastrous for the artist.

Having failed the contest of large the Price of Rome, Géricault decides, in 1816, to leave for the Italy to its own expenses. It is durably impressed by the painters of the Italian Renaissance, in particular Michel-Angel, like by the Flemish Master Pierre Paul Rubens, for the movement which it gives to his works. Among its contemporaries, it is for the baron Gros that it has the most admiration.

At the beginning of its career, Géricault testifies to qualities which clearly distinguish it from the neo-classic painters of the school of David: it indeed chooses to privilege the topics of the daily life, which it carries to the row of heroic important facts. Cantor of despair and the human suffering, he quickly becomes the leader of the romantic painters .

Its first work, Officer of hunters with horse of the imperial guard charging (1812), is an image of the victory (one is at the time where Napoleon the defeat did not live yet). Two years later, in a Living room organized by Louis XVIII, Géricault exposes his second work beside the first: wounded Cuirassier (1814, Museum of Louvre). In a contrast striking with the first, this one represents an officer on a slope with his horse, moving away from the battle. Its glance, " turned towards the tuerie" that it has just left, translates the distress, the defeat. Dramatic and monumental, these two equestrian portraits, already impressed imposing talent of the artist, arouse a certain interest at the time of the Living room of 1814, in Paris occupied by the Allies.

In 1819, a new Living room opens in Louvre. Géricault wants to carry out an immense, spectacular work. Seeking its inspiration in the newspapers, it discovers l'" there; business of Méduse" , not very glorious maritime catastrophe that restored monarchy had tried to choke. The fact various that the painter exposes on his fabric is that of the shipwreck of a frigate, the Méduse , on July 2nd, 1816, off the coasts of Senegal. This building of the royal navy, with nearly 400 team members on his board, had as a commander Hughes Duroy de Chaumareys, inefficient officer, revoked under the empire, but named in its functions at the time of the return to monarchy.

Alerted by his crew of the imminence of a danger, the commander refuses to pay to it attention and it is the drama: the ship runs body and goods. The officers and senior officials early made seize the six lifeboats, giving up ship and shipwrecked men with the contempt of the code of honor of the Navy. The 150 other members of the crew will pile up under pitiful conditions on a raft of 20m on 10m, built with haste by means of wood logs. This one was to be drawn by the lifeboats, but the cord was " mystérieusement" crossed. A storm bursts, and this shipwreck is transformed into an increasingly atrocious odyssey where scenes of murder follow one another, commits suicide, madness and cannibalism. The culminating moment chosen by Géricault in this drift which will last thirteen days, is that where the shipwrecked men see with far the ship which comes to save them, the brig Argos . Géricault paints this moment intensely dramatic, " between hello and perdition" , where the still valid men rise after a fashion to make sign with the ship which not, hardly visible, at the horizon.

The painter found his inspiration, it wants to move the public. Anxious to anchor its work in reality, it takes note of the account of two survivors: Alexandre Corréard, the engineer geographer of the Jellyfish , and Henri Savigny, the surgeon of the edge. It will make build a model life size of the boat in its workshop and will ask the seven survivors of the shipwreck to come to pose for him. It will go even until exposing in its workshop of the human remainders. Thanks to the mediation of a friend doctor at the hospital of Beaujon, near to its workshop, Géricault will be able to obtain arms and feet amputees, in order to study them. In the same way, it will draw several times a decapitated head, obtained with Bicêtre, where an institution was which was all at the same time old people's home, prison and lunatic asylum. According to Charles Clément, his biographer, a choking stink reigned sometimes in its workshop of the street of Suburb-of-Rolls. Géricault will work with eagerness, during one year whole, with a work of five meters out of seven which is, according to the expression of Michel Schneider, " a lesson of architecture as much as a lesson of anatomie".

the Raft of the Jellyfish will be presented to the museum of Louvre in 1819. The painter expects an apotheosis, so much it was given of evil to perfect his masterpiece. But during the fixing, an error makes that the table will be placed too much high, beside immense works which completely will crush it. Géricault sees the drama being held in front of its eyes. One makes fun of this work which fustigated, through the commander of the Méduse , Louis XVIII and all the royalists. Éreinté by criticism, Géricault leaves Paris for England. From April 1820 at November 1821, it travels in England, and discovers at the same time the large English landscape designers, of which Constable and Turner, and the horse-races, it was derechef all a new series of works inspired by " the greatest conquest of the homme" whose, inter alia, Derby of Epsom celebrates it (Musée of Louvre). At the end of its life, it is devoted to the topic of the Cheval, which impassions it since the beginning of its career. The animal becomes indeed the center of its personal Mythologie, the messenger of the meditations of the painter on passion, the suffering and death. The equestrian history of Géricault told in detail by Bartabas in its film Mazeppa (1993).

In December 1821, the painter returns to Paris, falls ill and does not get rid of its state that Baudelaire will describe so well: its Spleen (trouble of the life). It will consequently start to paint a series of paintings on the topic of the madness. It explores this universe and his/her friend head doctor of the Salpêtrière and pioneer in psychiatric studies, Etienne-Jean Georget, will propose to him to paint the portraits of ten patients to improve his state. Each one represents the total distress, like that of the lunatic with monomanie of the military command which shows a man (probably a " half-solde" , former soldier of the Napoleonean epopee, put at foot by restored monarchy), obsessed by lost glory, equipped with the daily newspaper like a soldier, thus revealing obsession and absolute despair.

In addition to its oil-base paints, Géricault also carries out Lithographie S, Sculpture S, rare but remarkable, and hundreds of Dessin S. He dies the January 26th 1824, weakened by a chronic Tuberculose. He is buried with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise to Paris. A Statue of Bronze as well as a low-relief representing the Raft of the Jellyfish , both signed Antoine Etex, decorate his burial.

Paintings