Théodore Géricault from Private Collections

10 . Rearing Horse: Study for “The Race of the Barberi Horses”

c. 1817 Black chalk with touches of white gouache on paper 4 × 5 ¼ inches ( 10 . 2 × 13 . 4 cm)

provenance Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 2001 ).

Collection of Roberta J.M. Olson and Alexander B.V. Johnson

This drawing of a rearing horse in profile probably dates from a late moment in Géricault’s conception of The Race of the Barberi Horses , when he had settled on depicting the start of the race and directed the action of the composition from left to right. Like the Study for “The Race of the Barberi Horses” (cat. 9 ), this drawing features the rampant horse at the starting line. In the final oil study now in the Louvre, the horse is positioned at the far right of the composition, with his rear flank highlighted in brilliant white. As Eitner noted in correspondence dated July 2000 , the present work may be among Géricault’s calques for the Race , tracings of figures that the artist drew from earlier studies, and would sometimes rework. Executed on brown paper with black chalk and heightened with white gouache, a technique that Géricault perfected during his year in Italy, it has the stately, elegiac air of many of Géricault’s independent drawings from this period. (AK)