Théodore Géricault from Private Collections

Géricault experiments with new methods of painting and pursues an independent course of training. He focuses on classical themes and finds great inspiration in Michelangelo’s style. Géricault’s drawings of this period become more linear and controlled. The artist decides to submit a work for the academic Rome Prize competition and prepares by painting nude studies. In March, Géricault fails at the second stage of the Rome prize competition but decides to go to Italy on his own. The artist’s love affair with Alexandrine- Modeste Caruel, the young wife of his uncle, begins around this time, and may have been a factor in his decision to leave Paris for Italy. On September 8 , the shipwreck of the Medusa is brought to the public’s attention through the first press reports. By late September, Géricault leaves for Italy spending the next month in Florence. He leaves for Rome in November. At the Roman carnival in February, Géricault is impressed by the spectacle of the races of the Barberi horses and produces many drawings and compositional studies in oil on this theme, possibly envisioning a work he could submit to the 1817 Paris Salon. In March, Géricault travels to Naples to see Paestum and in June returns to Rome and the project of the Race . He ends his Italian sojourn abruptly in late September, traveling through Siena, Florence and Switzerland on his return trip to France, reaching Paris in November. He becomes increasingly interested in modern military subjects while also pursuing Italian-inspired works such as The Cattle Market . The artist begins his first experiments with lithography. The first edition of Corréard and Savigny’s account of Medusa’s shipwreck is published. Géricault creates a series of lithographs predominantly around the theme of the Napoléonic wars ( Retour de Russie ). He also renders contemporary subjects in Les Boxeurs and Le Factionnaire Suisse and uses recent events to create a politically- charged painting that could become the subject for a Salon work, The Murder of Fualdès . On February 24 , Géricault buys the large canvas that will become the base for The Raft of the Medusa . He spends the rest of the year developing the painting by exploring various scenes of the event including the Rescue , Mutiny , Cannibalism, and the Sighting of the Rescue Vessel . He decides on the Sighting and begins transferring this onto the canvas by autumn. In July and August, Géricault pauses work on the Raft to produce a series of painted landscapes: Landscape with Roman Tomb , Landscape with Aqueduct , and Landscape with Fishermen .

1816

1817

1818