The age of an artist is different. Someone creates for 40-50 years, leaving hundreds of paintings to people, someone barely manages to reveal his talent ... Gericault was given only a decade to work. His tragic death came as a surprise to everyone and a huge loss for art. But each work of this master has become a model for several generations of artists, and in the history of art it is difficult to find a painter close in talent and depth.

Theodore Gericault was born into a wealthy bourgeois family. His father had several tobacco plantations in the south of France, his mother came from a highly respected merchant family. The boy's childhood passed in time great revolution which miraculously did not affect his family.

From his youth, Theodore was distinguished by two passions - horses and drawing. Good tone demanded that the offspring of a famous family should receive a good education and served the country. After graduating from a prestigious college, Gericault enters military service, in Musketeers. By this time, the revolutionary ideas were somewhat shabby and lost their rebellious meaning. France turned from a republic into an empire, and an empire, as you know, requires an imperial style in art. The heavy, clumsy and rich Empire style could not please a young man who received the basics of painting from such famous artists as Vernet and Guerin, faithful to the old testaments of the great Flemings and Dutch.

The young musketeer writes his first works, as expected, on battle scenes. This period of creativity left us many drawings and sketches depicting horses beloved by the master.

For 5 years (1810-1815), the artist diligently copies the work,. All this time he is trying to comprehend the secrets of the masters of the past and find his own style. Important role in the life of Gericault played a trip to Italy. Unlike France, in this country, painting traditions have been continuously developing for 6 centuries, and the rest of Europe often adopted everything that was born in Italy.

From the Italian trip Gericault brings his most famous work"The raft of the Medusa". Drama, emotionality, unprecedented accuracy and meaningfulness of the image surprised the French and left many indifferent. France has not yet adopted the fashion for romanticism, reveling in its own Empire style and the remnants of classicism. The French were not ready to appreciate the work of their great master.

Quite a bit of time passed and critics, adherents of academicism in painting, suddenly saw in Gericault a talented and courageous master. The French "grunted" and went to see the picture for the second time. Glory has come...

Enjoying fame and many orders, Géricault begins the work that he had conceived back in 1812. Romantic, citizen and creative person, the artist was going to write a monumental work on the retreat of French troops from Russia. The plot was known, the composition was developed, prototypes were searched among the soldiers. A tragic accident ended the master's life. In 1824, during his usual riding practice for Géricault, he fell off his horse. The blow fell on the temple.

The legacy of the master was several psychological portraits, battle paintings, several genre works, several unfinished sculptures and a huge number of drawings and sketches, in each of which you can see the master's brilliant ideas that remained unfinished.

Théodore Géricault was born in 1791 in Rouen. His father, Georges-Nicolas Géricault, was a wealthy man: a tobacco plantation owner and a major tobacco merchant, while his mother, Louise-Jeanne-Marie Caruel de Saint-Martin, came from a family that belonged to the aristocracy of Normandy. The Gericault family moved to Paris in 1796. In 1801, Theodore was placed in the boarding school of the private boarding house Dubois-Loiseau, and then his father transferred him to the boarding school of Rene Richard Castel. In 1804 Géricault entered the Imperial Lyceum. After the death of his mother, Theodore was raised by his father. The boy began to show interest in painting early, this was facilitated by communication with his uncle, Jean-Baptiste Caruel, who collected works by Flemish and Dutch artists. Familiar uncles, novice artists and students of Guerin, Adelaide de Montgolfier and Louise Swaton, took Theodore with them to the museum, where they copied the works of old masters. The boy spent his holidays in Normandy, where, according to one of his friends, he painted a lot.

Years of study

At the end of 1808, Gericault entered the apprenticeship of Carl Vernet, a master of battle and genre scenes, whose work reflected the whole life of imperial Paris. In Vernet's workshop, the novice artist mostly practiced depicting horses, got acquainted with the anatomical drawing of an animal, but here he had the opportunity to see prints made from the works of English animal painters, copied Vernet's paintings. Géricault also visited the Louvre, where he studied equestrian scenes decorating antique sarcophagi. Theodore became a member of Vernet's house, together with him he visited the Franconi circus, the arenas and stud farms of Paris and its immediate environs. During the years of study, Vernet began his friendship with the son of the teacher - Horace, perhaps these friendly relations are the reason that Gericault remained in Vernet's workshop for so long.

In 1810, Géricault left Vernet's workshop to continue his studies with Pierre Guerin, who, according to Étienne Delescluze, was "the only one at that time - after David, anyway - who had a real disposition towards pedagogy" . IN early XIX century, the French public and critics saw Guerin as an artist who had departed from the art of David and his followers. The anti-David reaction played a significant role in this trend; in fact, Guerin's reforms continued in the direction indicated by the Davidic school. Be that as it may, but from the workshop of Guerin, "an adept of the Davidic school" and the least "pre-romantic" master of his time, the most prominent representatives of romanticism came out. Little reliable information has been preserved about the teaching methods in Guerin's workshop. It is only known that he did not impose his views on his students, and the latter did not receive a systematic vocational education. Géricault visited Guerin's atelier irregularly for about six months, probably to be able to paint from life and communicate with other students of the master. One of them, the artist Champione, wrote in a new way - with a “bold stroke”, this influenced the manner of writing Gericault, and later the manner of another student of Guerin - Eugene Delacroix. Theodore continued to visit Guerin even after graduation, keeping in touch with him and his students. Subsequently, Theodore was the first to invite Guerin to see the just completed The Raft of the Medusa.

As in Vernet's atelier, Gericault copied the teacher's works from Guerin, and also redrawn the anatomical sheets. The paintings he painted at that time (“Samson and Delilah”, “Departure of Odysseus from the island of Ithaca”, “Defense of the Thermopylae Gorge”), according to Charles Clement, the artist’s biographer, were distinguished by an ““energetic” brush”; character movements, devoid of monotony; "compositional rhythms" dating back to the painting of David. With training from Guerin for Gericault, the process of forming an individual style began, and soon he, no longer in need of any guidance, moved on to independent work.

Probably, in the years 1811-1812, Géricault performed about fifty studies with nude models. His pictorial studies are distinguished from the usual for that time academic "bold and energetic brush"; unexpected, almost theatrical effects of chiaroscuro; tense dramatic mood. The artist does not strive to accurately reproduce nature, but composes a new look for each character. One of the characteristic examples of such studies is the "Study of the Sitter" (Moscow, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) from the series "Gladiators". The contrast of deep shadow and harsh light emphasizes the disturbing image of a man "subject to fate." As V. Turchin notes, these works of Géricault evoke the words of Guerin addressed to the student: “Your coloring is devoid of credibility: all these contrasts of light and shadow can make me think that you are writing in the moonlight ...”

At the same time, Gericault painted sketches of horses, which are fundamentally different from his studies with sitters. The artist worked in the Versailles stables mainly in 1811-1813. He created "portraits" of famous horses, one of his paintings - "Napoleon's Horse" - received the award of the Empress Marie-Louise. In the process of work, the artist was looking for the individuality inherent in each animal, studied its habits, practiced the accuracy of the image of the breed. His horses are placed in a specific, most often natural, environment. Gericault painted these canvases with small brushes, working through the details and avoiding large color spots and strong black and white contrasts. The diversity of the manner of writing, which manifested itself in the work on the studies of sitters and horses, will be characteristic of him in the future. A passionate lover of horses and riding, he created works of a purely animalistic genre, the likes of which have not yet been seen in France.

Probably, during these years, Gericault made his plaster ecorche "Horse", which was widely known among his contemporaries. In sculptural works, he developed motifs, which he later transferred to the painting canvas.

Studying the Paintings of the Old Masters

Gericault carefully copied the paintings of the old masters, starting with the Renaissance artists. Among those whose originals either with engraved repetitions of works attracted Theodore: P. P. Rubens, Titian, D. Velázquez, Rembrandt, Giorgione, Parmigianino and many others. More than sixty copies made by Géricault are known. He continued to study the old masters during his trips to Italy (1816-1817) and England (1820-1821). Géricault also produced a number of graphic sheets reworking themes from paintings by Michelangelo, Carracci, French followers of Caravaggio and decorative works by 18th-century artists. He did not seek to imitate the original, generalizing a lot, giving more expression to the rhythm, enhancing the coloristic solution of the picture: “He sought to comprehend the secret of the enormous vitality, the scale of the images of the works of the old masters, their impact on the modern viewer. Striving for active, active art, he longed to find examples of the same understanding in previous times. This determined the direction of his search.

Salons of 1812 and 1814

In 1812, Géricault presented his work Portrait of Dieudonné at the Salon (currently exhibited as "Officer of the imperial chasseurs on the attack" (Paris, Louvre)). The picture of the artist, unknown until then neither to the general public nor in the professional environment (they even said that he “almost did not study”), attracted the attention of critics. She was praised by M.-B. Butar, advising the novice artist to take up the battle genre, which was placed above the rest in the era of the Empire. J. Durdan, who placed the analysis of the canvas in the "Galeries de Peyntur française", spoke of Gericault as "perhaps the best of all our painters." The canvas was also noted by David himself.

Probably, the success of "Officer ..." gave Géricault the idea to create a series dedicated to military history Napoleonic France. But he, unlike the famous masters of that era, did not conceive large-scale works depicting battles and parades, but sought to convey the “spirit of the times” in portraits of soldiers and officers, representatives of all branches of the armed forces (“Portrait of a Carabinieri Officer”, “Hussar Trumpeter”, "Three buglers", "Veteran", "Soldier's head"). Gericault was not bound by the terms of official orders, like Gros, Girodet and David, and therefore was free in his interpretation of what was happening. His works of 1813-1815 are distinguished by "a bright pictorial temperament, and sometimes subtle psychologism." They were certainly written from specific people, but there are no clearly expressed individualities, attention to a person as a carrier of traits of one type or another predominates.

Paris first saw the "Officer of the imperial cavalry during the attack" when it already became known about the defeat of the French army in Russia (autumn 1812), and in the Salon of 1814 this composition was exhibited in tandem with the "Wounded cuirassier leaving the battlefield" ( Paris, Louvre). The Salon of 1814 took place after the fall of Napoleon, and Géricault's paintings were the only reminder of a tragic and glorious era already passing, standing out among the works of other artists who chose neutral themes. Art critics in their reviews of the Salon either did not write anything about the works of Géricault, or spoke of them disapprovingly.

Gericault's actions at that time were so contradictory that the artist's biographers find it difficult to explain what guided him in his decisions. At the end of 1814 (December), with the assistance of his father and uncle, he, who had recently evaded military duty, acquired a patent for service in a musketeer company under the command of Lauriston, a privileged military unit. During the Hundred Days, Gericault was in the escort of Louis XVIII, who was fleeing, then, under the guise of a peasant, the artist moved to Normandy, where he probably remained until the middle of summer 1815.

Despite unfavorable personal circumstances, it was at this time that a new style of the artist was formed, he turned to new topics, developed new ideas. Returning to Paris, he began work on the composition "The Flood", which is a free adaptation of Poussin's "Flood" from the Louvre. This canvas, which is essentially a “landscape-drama”, was clearly created under the influence of Italian fine art, primarily the work of Michelangelo, which is especially noticeable in the plastic solution of the figures of dying people. Subsequently, Gericault most fully developed the theme of man in the face of the elements in his most famous painting, The Raft of the Medusa.

Italy

Gericault, like many European artists, sought to visit Italy to study the works of the old masters. Funds for the trip could be obtained by taking part in the competition of the School of Fine Arts, and Géricault originally intended to write the composition "Paris Dying" for him. However, the work did not work out, and the artist helped out the funds for the trip by completing landscape panels for the house of one of his friends in Villa Cotre. This circumstance unleashed Gericault's hands: having won the School competition, he would have been obliged to spend six years in Italy (the full term of the pensioner's trip), which was not part of his plans. The artist left France for a while and for another reason, this time a personal one. At that time, he entered into a love affair with his uncle's wife, Alexandrina-Modeste Caruel, and was afraid of her disclosure.

He visited Naples, painted local landscapes and inhabitants, studied the works of artists of the Neapolitan school. Gericault spent most of his time in Rome. Seeing the work of Michelangelo with his own eyes (the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel made a particularly strong impression on him), Géricault, according to Clement, was shocked. He is fascinated by the monumentalization of forms, his pen drawings, reminiscent of Michelangelo's drawings (for example, "The Man Throwing the Bull"), became some of the most interesting executed in Rome.

Having Guerin's recommendations with him, the artist met with pensioners of the French Academy, whose ideals he did not share. Nevertheless, his close acquaintances in Rome were Auguste (since 1814 he worked mainly as a sculptor), Schnetz (at that time engaged in genre painting), Thomas and Robert. Géricault was looking for plots for a large composition or several compositions. At first he was attracted to paintings Everyday life, genre or street scenes, but soon the artist lost interest in "sentimental" Italianism "" (Turchin), he was not interested in ancient myths and ancient history either.

The inspiration came towards the end of the Roman carnival, in early February 1817. The holiday ended with a race of bare horses that ran through the streets of the city from Piazza del Popolo to the Venetian Palace. Passionate lover of horses, Géricault created whole line pictures for this story. He conceived a grandiose composition (about 10 meters long). Sketches for her are either precisely caught, quite definite motifs (in the words of Charles Clement, “like portraits”), or options for a generalized transfer of nature. Géricault worked in a modern manner and in a classic antique style (finishing the work in the ancient style). For a pictorial sketch (1817, Baltimore, Walter Art Gallery), he used the composition of a popular at that time engraving depicting a competition, sustained in a classic spirit. Gericault gave the scene a more vital and modern character using intense color; achieved greater expression due to some reduction in space and framing of stands with spectators and figures of grooms holding animals. Another variation of the theme - several sketches developed in an antiquity manner - of which art critics recognize the version now stored in Rouen (“Horse Stopped by Slaves”) as the most successful. According to Charles Clement, it is she who is closest to the canvas conceived by Géricault. In this work, the artist successfully synthesized his observations of the landscapes of Poussin, the “rhythms of the Parthenon” (Turchin), the results of studying the images of a person from Michelangelo and the mannerists. Finally, in the last (according to Clement) sketch (Paris, Louvre), Gericault turned to the generalization of the image. This time he again chose the moment before the start, violating the laws of perspective construction for the sake of greater expressiveness and expression of the composition.

In September 1817 Géricault left Italy. He himself assessed the year spent there as “unhappy and sad”, apparently, loneliness, troubles in his personal life and, most of all, dissatisfaction with the results of his work affected: he never satisfied his thirst for the grandiose, epic, which owned many artists of that time . He failed to break out of the framework of intimacy and create a work that is large-scale and addressed to people.

"The Medusa Raft"

In the autumn of 1817, the book The Loss of the Frigate Meduza was published. Eyewitnesses of the event, geographer Alexander Correard and physician Henri Savigny, described in it one of the most tragic episodes in the history of the French fleet - a thirteen-day wandering of a raft with frigate passengers who left the ship that had run aground off the Canary Islands. The book (probably it was already its second edition) fell into the hands of Géricault, who saw in history a plot for his large canvas. He perceived the drama of Medusa not only and not so much as a “didactic example of a narrow political significance” (the captain of the frigate, a former emigrant, who was assigned most of the blame for the death of the raft passengers, was appointed under patronage), but as a universal history.

Géricault took the path of recreating what happened through the study of the materials available to him and meeting with witnesses and, as Clement says, compiled a "dossier of testimony and documents." The artist met Correard and Savigny, and probably even painted their portraits. He thoroughly studied their book, perhaps a publication with lithographs that accurately depicted the episodes of the tragic event. The carpenter, who served on the frigate, made a small copy of the raft for Géricault. The artist himself made figures of people from wax and, placing them on a raft, studied the composition from different points of view, perhaps with the help of a camera obscura. According to the researchers, Géricault might have been familiar with Savigny's brochure "Review of the effects of hunger and thirst experienced after the sinking of the frigate Medusa" (1818). He visited hospital morgues, making sketches of dead heads, emaciated bodies, severed limbs, in his studio, according to the artist O. Raffe, he created something like an anatomical theater. Completed preparatory work a trip to Le Havre, where Gericault painted studies of the sea and sky.

Art historian Lorenz Eitner identified several main plots that Gericault developed: "Rescue of the Victims", "Battle on the Raft", "Cannibalism", "The Appearance of the Argus". In total, in the process of choosing a plot, the artist created about a hundred studies, the most interesting for him were the scenes of rescue and cannibalism on a raft.

Finally, Gericault settled on one of the moments of the highest tension in history: morning last day raft drift, when the few survivors saw the ship Argus on the horizon. Gericault rented a studio that could fit the grandiose canvas he had conceived, and worked on it for eight months, almost without leaving the studio.

Gericault created a composition from four groups characters, abandoning the classical constructions using parallel lines, he formed an energetic diagonal. From the group with dead bodies and the father leaning over the dead son, the viewer's gaze is directed to the four figures at the mast. The dynamic contrast of their restraint is made up of people trying to get up and a group giving signals. The ocean does not take up much space on a huge canvas, but the artist managed to convey the feeling of "the magnitude of the raging elements."

According to Vernet's student and Géricault's friend, Antoine Montfort, Theodore painted directly on an unfinished canvas (“on a white surface”, without underpainting and colored primer), on which only a preparatory drawing was applied. However, his hand was firm:

“I watched with what close attention he looked at the model before touching the canvas with a brush; he seemed to be extremely slow, although in fact he acted quickly: his smear lay exactly in its place, so that there was no need for any corrections. .

In the same way, David wrote in his time, whose method was familiar to Géricault from the time of his apprenticeship with Guérin. Gericault was completely absorbed in his work, he left the social life, only a few friends came to see him. He began to write early in the morning, as soon as the light allowed, and worked until evening.

The Raft of the Medusa received mixed reviews from French critics and the public. Only years later, the picture was appreciated. The Raft of the Medusa was successful in London, where an exhibition was organized by the entrepreneur Bullock. It took place from June 12 to December 30, 1820, about 50 thousand visitors saw the picture. Critics called Medusa a masterpiece that reflects real life, and its author has been compared with Michelangelo and Caravaggio. At the same time, not too understanding the realities of modern French painting, the British ranked Gericault among the representatives of the school of David. A critic from The Times spoke of the "coldness" that distinguished this school and noted the same "coldness of color, artificiality of poses, pathetism" in Gericault's painting. The London exhibition of one painting was also successful for Gericault in material terms, he was entitled to a third of the proceeds from the sale of entrance tickets and received 20 thousand francs.

Last years

Returning to Paris from England, Géricault was ill a lot, his condition aggravated by several falls while riding. He died in Paris on January 26, 1824.

Jean Louis Andre Theodore Géricault (French Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault; September 26, 1791, Rouen - January 26, 1824, Paris) - French painter, the largest representative of European painting of the Romantic era. His paintings, including The Raft of the Medusa and Races at Epsom, became a new word in painting, although their true significance in the development of fine art was realized much later. There is no single point of view among researchers as to which direction the artist was a representative of: he is considered the forerunner of romanticism, a realist who was ahead of his time, or one of the followers of David.

Théodore Géricault was born in 1791 in Rouen. His father, Georges-Nicolas Gericault, was a wealthy man: the owner of tobacco plantations and a major tobacco merchant, and his mother, Louise-Jeanne-Marie Caruel de Saint-Martin, came from a family that belonged to the aristocracy of Normandy. The Gericault family moved to Paris in 1796. In 1801, Theodore was placed in the boarding school of the private boarding house Dubois-Loiseau, and then his father transferred him to the boarding school of Rene Richard Castel. In 1804 Gericault entered the Imperial Lyceum. After the death of his mother, Theodore was raised by his father. The boy began to show interest in painting early, this was facilitated by communication with his uncle, Jean-Baptiste Caruel, who collected works by Flemish and Dutch artists. Familiar uncles, novice artists and students of Guerin, Adelaide de Montgolfier and Louise Swaton, took Theodore with them to the museum, where they copied the works of old masters. The boy spent his holidays in Normandy, where, according to one of his friends, he painted a lot.

At the end of 1808, Gericault went to study with Carl Vernet, a master of battle and genre scenes, whose work reflected the whole life of imperial Paris. In Vernet's workshop, the novice artist mostly practiced depicting horses, got acquainted with the anatomical drawing of an animal, here he had the opportunity to see prints made from the works of English animal painters, copied Vernet's paintings. Géricault also visited the Louvre, where he studied equestrian scenes decorating ancient sarcophagi. Theodore became a member of Vernet's house, together with him he visited the Franconi circus, the arenas and stud farms of Paris and its immediate environs. During the years of study, Vernet began his friendship with the teacher's son - Horace, perhaps these friendships are the reason that Géricault remained in Vernet's workshop for so long.

In 1810, Géricault left Vernet's studio to continue his studies with Pierre Guerin, who, according to Étienne Delescluze, was "the only one at that time - after David, anyway - who had a real disposition towards pedagogy." At the beginning of the 19th century, the French public and critics saw in Guérin an artist who had departed from the art of David and his followers. The anti-David reaction played a significant role in this trend; in fact, Guerin's reforms continued in the direction indicated by the Davidic school. Be that as it may, but from the workshop of Guerin, "an adept of the Davidic school" and the least "pre-romantic" master of his time, the most prominent representatives of romanticism came out. Little reliable information has been preserved about the teaching methods in Guerin's workshop. It is only known that he did not impose his views on his students, and the latter did not receive a systematic professional education. Géricault visited Guerin's atelier irregularly for about six months, probably to be able to paint from life and communicate with other students of the master. One of them, the artist Champione, wrote in a new way - with a “bold stroke”, this influenced the manner of writing Gericault, and later the manner of another student of Guerin - Eugene Delacroix. Theodore continued to visit Guerin even after graduation, keeping in touch with him and his students. Subsequently, Theodore was the first to invite Guerin to see the just completed "The Raft of the Medusa".

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