Théodore Géricault from Private Collections

18 . Study for “The Plasterer’s Horse”

1822 or 1823 Graphite on paper mounted to card 3 ½ x 3 ¾ inches ( 9 x 8 . 5 cm)

Inscribed on verso: Ancienne Coll. du Colonel Brault [sic] /Géricault Collection stamp on verso: Lugt 153 c (Collection Alfred Normand)

provenance Alfred Normand, Paris; Shepherd Gallery, New York ( 1983 ).

Private Collection

This precisely rendered drawing of a horse’s hind quarters is a study for the lithograph Le Cheval du Plâtrier (fig. 19 ), which Géricault produced in collaboration with the lithographer Joseph Volmar in 1823 . (See Paris 1991 , no. 233 , p. 389 , on the date of this series). The lithograph was based on a watercolor (private collection), whose composition is oriented in the reverse direction. It is part of a series of twelve lithographs designed by Géricault and completed largely by Volmar and Léon Cogniet. Six of them were reversed versions of some of the prints from the English series of 1821 , while others were new compositions for which Géricault submitted watercolors to his young collaborators. It appears that this drawing is an example of what Clément ( 1879 [1974]. p . 221 ) called Géricault’s “directing, reviewing and correcting” Volmar and Cogniet’s efforts in the course of the lithographs’ execution. Clément writes that according to Cogniet, Géricault was dissatisfied with the quality of light in the English suite of lithographs; he found the light overly disseminated, and wanted the shadows and darks of the French suite to be more richly and frankly expressed. The present work, whose direction is the same as in the print, is probably a response to one of Volmar’s attempts. The artist has taken pains to clarify the specific contrasts and general distribution of light and dark, to map the different depths of shadow, and to extract the dimensional animal from the shadowed ground by further darkening the horse’s edges at strategic anatomical points. (AK)

Fig. 19 Le cheval du plâtrier (Delteil 86 )