Théodore Géricault from Private Collections

8 . The Death of Paris (Verso: Christ on the Cross)

1816 Pencil, pen and brown ink with brown wash on paper 5 ¼ x 8 ½ inches ( 13 . 5 x 21 . 5 cm) Collection stamp lower right: Lugt 2103 b (Collection Pierre Olivier Dubaut)

provenance Brame, Saint-Rémy, by 1879 ; Pierre Olivier Dubaut, Paris; Hans E. Bühler, Winterthur; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox Ltd., by 1986 ; Helmut F. Stern, Michigan; Private collection. exhi b i t ions Paris, Hôtel Charpentier, Exposition Géricault , April–May 1924 , no. 76 ; New York, Marie Sterner Galleries, Fir st Exhibition in America of Géricault , 1936 , no. 25 ; Bernheim-Jeune 1937 , no. 86 ; Bignou 1950 , no. 2 ; Winterthur 1953 , no. 119 ; Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Gros, Géricault, Delacroix , 1954 , no. 34 . l i terature Clément 1879 ( 1974 ), no. 92 bis; Léon Rosenthal, “À propos d’un cinquantenaire et d’une exposition: la place de Géricault dans la peinture française,” Revue de l’art ancien et moderne , June 1924 , p. 53 ; Lorenz Eitner, “Two Re-discovered Landscapes by Géricault and the Chronology of his Early Work,” Art Bulletin , June 1954 , p. 136 , no. 25 ; Bühler 1956 , no. 44 ; Lorenz Eitner, “Géricault’s ‘Dying Paris’ and the Meaning of his Romantic Classicism,” Master Drawings , Spring 1963 , p. 26 (illus.); Eitner, “Reversals of Direction in Géricault’s Compositional Projects” in Stil und Uberlieferung in der Kun st des Abendlandes , III, Berlin 1967 , p. 129 (illus.); Lorenz Eitner, no. 89 ; Grunchec 1985 , p. 59 (illus.).

Thomas French Fine Art

In 1816 , Oenone and Paris was the assigned subject for the third, decisive stage of the Grand Prix de Rome competition at the École des Beaux Arts. Géricault had entered the competition

that year, but was eliminated after the second stage. Though no longer a candidate for the Rome Prize, he pursued the subject in a series of drawings that emphasized different aspects of the story. This work represents the dying Paris who has been pleading with his first wife, the nymph Oenone (not present in this image), to use her powers to heal the deadly wounds he incurred in combat during the fall of Troy. The drawing was identified by Clément and subsequent writers as The Death of Hector , until Eitner ( 1963 ) properly identified it as a depiction of Oenone and Paris . In addition to the present work, Eitner identified six other compositional studies in ink and wash that focused on different moments of the tragic encounter.

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