Theodore Gericault: 101 Paintings and Drawings

by Maria Tsaneva

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was an influential French painter and lithographer, known for "The Raft of the Medusa" and other paintings. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic Movement. His stormy career lasted little more than a decade and in that time he displayed a meteoric and many-sided genius. His love of thrilling action, his sense of swirling movement, his energetic conduct of paint, and his taste for the horrid were all to become features of Romanticism. Géricault was, at the same time avant-garde in his he made studies from corpses and severed limbs for The Raft of the Medusa and painted an extraordinary series of portraits of mental patients in the clinic of his friend Dr Georget. His work had enormous influence, most notably on Delacroix.

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2015

Reviews

[Raimo Wirkkala · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one really wasn't even worth the modest expense. A little more text and the odd colour-plate would've been nice. Difficult to really judge the art because of the rather poor b&w reproductions. Having seen The Raft of the Medusa in-person, I can attest to its magnificence as a painting of its period. I would like to see the portraits of Delacroix, Byron, and the self-portrait, as well, under similar circumstances.
Horses are magnificent creatures. Why the artist devoted so much time to painting their asses mystifies me. His numerous paintings of the whole animal do nothing for me. He fails to breathe life into them, somehow. Perhaps this explains how he so effectively captured a dead cat.
Not to pile on, but there is also an egregious typographical error in the text. Sloppy.