Raft of the Medusa
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For other uses, See: Radeau (disambiguation)
The Raft of the Medusa is an oil painting
of 1818–1819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer
Théodore Géricault
(1791–1824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. At 491 cm × 716 cm (193.3 in × 282.3 in), it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate
Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania
on July 5, 1816. At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation, dehydration, cannibalism and madness. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain perceived to be acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy
. In reality, King Louis XVIII
had no say in the captain's appointment, since, then as now, monarchs were not directly involved in appointments made to vessels like a naval frigate. The vicomte de Chaumareys' appointment as captain of the Méduse would have been a routine naval appointment, made within the Ministry of the Navy.
In choosing the tragedy as subject matter for his first major work—an uncommissioned depiction of an event from recent history—Géricault consciously selected a well-known incident that would generate great public interest and help launch his career. The event fascinated the young artist, and before he began work on the final painting, he undertook extensive research and produced many preparatory sketches. He interviewed two of the survivors, and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. His efforts took him to morgues and hospitals where he could view, first-hand, the colour and texture of the flesh of the dying and dead. As the artist had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 Paris Salon, attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. However, it established his international reputation, and today is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the Romantic movement
in French painting.
Although The Raft of the Medusa retains elements of the traditions of history painting
, in both its choice of subject matter and its dramatic presentation, it represents a break from the calm and order of the then-prevailing Neoclassical
school. Géricault's work attracted wide attention almost immediately from its first showing, and was subsequently exhibited in London. It was acquired by the Louvre
soon after the artist's early death at the age of 32. The painting's influence can be seen in the works of Eugène Delacroix
, J. M. W. Turner
, Gustave Courbet
and Édouard Manet
.
In June 1816, the French frigate
Méduse departed from Rochefort
, bound for the Senegal
ese port of Saint-Louis
. She headed a convoy of three other ships: the storeship
Loire, the brig
Argus and the corvette
Écho. Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys had been appointed captain
of the frigate despite having scarcely sailed in 20 years. The frigate's mission was to accept the British return of Senegal under the terms of France's acceptance of the Peace of Paris. The appointed French governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien-Désiré Schmaltz
, and his wife Reine Schmaltz were among the passengers.
In an effort to make good time, the Méduse overtook the other ships, but due to its speed it drifted 100 miles (161 km) off course. On July 2, it ran aground on a sandbank off the West African coast, near today's Mauritania
. The collision was widely blamed on the incompetence of De Chaumereys, a returned émigré
who lacked experience and ability, but had been granted his commission as a result of an act of political preferment. Efforts to free the ship failed, so, on July 5, the frightened passengers and crew started an attempt to travel the 60 miles (97 km) to the African coast in the frigate's six boats. Although the Méduse was carrying 400 people, including 160 crew, there was space for only about 250 in the boats. The remainder of the ship's complement—at least 146 men and one woman—were piled onto a hastily-built raft, that partially submerged once it was loaded. Seventeen crew members opted to stay aboard the grounded Méduse. The captain and crew aboard the other boats intended to tow the raft, but after only a few miles the raft was turned loose. For sustenance the crew of the raft had only a bag of ship's biscuit (consumed on the first day), two casks of water (lost overboard during fighting) and a few casks of wine.
According to critic Jonathan Miles, the raft carried the survivors "to the frontiers of human experience. Crazed, parched and starved, they slaughtered mutineers, ate their dead companions and killed the weakest." After 13 days, on July 17, 1816, the raft was rescued by the Argus by chance—no particular search effort was made by the French for the raft. By this time only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, died of starvation, or thrown themselves into the sea in despair. The incident became a huge public embarrassment for the French monarchy, only recently restored to power after Napoleon
's defeat in 1815
.
The makeshift raft is shown as barely seaworthy as it rides the deep waves, while the men are rendered as broken and in utter despair. One old man holds the corpse of his son at his knees; another tears his hair out in frustration and defeat. A number of bodies litter the foreground, waiting to be swept away by the surrounding waves. The men in the middle have just viewed a rescue ship; one points it out to another, and an African crew member, Jean Charles, stands on an empty barrel and frantically waves his handkerchief to draw the ship's attention.
The pictorial composition of the painting is constructed upon two pyramidal structures. The perimeter of the large mast on the left of the canvas forms the first. The horizontal grouping of dead and dying figures in the foreground forms the base from which the survivors emerge, surging upward towards the emotional peak, where the central figure waves desperately at a rescue ship.
The viewer's attention is first drawn to the centre of the canvas, then follows the directional flow of the survivors' bodies, viewed from behind and straining to the right. According to the art historian Justin Wintle, "a single horizontal diagonal rhythm [leads] us from the dead at the bottom left, to the living at the apex." Two other diagonal lines are used to heighten the dramatic tension. One follows the mast and its rigging and leads the viewer's eye towards an approaching wave that threatens to engulf the raft, while the second, composed of reaching figures, leads to the distant silhouette of the Argus, the ship that eventually rescued the survivors.
Géricault's palette is composed of pallid flesh tones, and the murky colours of the survivors' clothes, the sea and the clouds. Overall the painting is dark and relies largely on the use of sombre, mostly brown pigments, a palette that Géricault believed was effective in suggesting tragedy and pain. The work's lighting has been described as "Caravaggesque
", after the Italian artist closely associated with tenebrism
—the use of violent contrast between light and dark. Even Géricault's treatment of the sea is muted, being rendered in dark greens rather than the deep blues that could have afforded contrast with the tones of the raft and its figures. From the distant area of the rescue ship, a bright light shines, providing illumination to an otherwise dull brown scene.
Earlier travels had exposed Géricault to victims of insanity and plague, and while researching the Méduse his effort to be historically accurate and realistic led to an obsession with the stiffness
of corpses. To achieve the most authentic rendering of the flesh tones of the dead, he made sketches of bodies in the morgue of the Hospital Beaujon, studied the faces of dying hospital patients, brought severed limbs back to his studio to study their decay, and for a fortnight drew a severed head, borrowed from a lunatic asylum and stored on his studio roof.
He worked with Corréard, Savigny and another of the survivors, the carpenter Lavillette, to construct an accurately detailed scale model of the raft, which was reproduced on the finished canvas, even showing the gaps between some of planks. Géricault posed models, compiled a dossier of documentation, copied relevant paintings by other artists, and went to Le Havre
to study the sea and sky. Despite suffering from fever, he travelled to the coast on a number of occasions to witness storms breaking on the shore, and a visit to artists in England afforded further opportunity to study the elements while crossing the English Channel
.
He drew and painted numerous preparatory sketches while deciding which of several alternative moments of the disaster he would depict in the final work. The painting's conception proved slow and difficult for Géricault, and he struggled to select a single pictorially-effective moment to best capture the inherent drama of the event.
Among the scenes he considered were the mutiny against the officers from the second day on the raft, the cannibalism that occurred after only a few days, and the rescue. Géricault ultimately settled on the moment, recounted by one of the survivors, when they first saw, on the horizon, the approaching rescue ship Argus—visible in the upper right of the painting—which they attempted to signal. The ship, however, passed by. In the words of one of the surviving crew members, "From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound despondency and grief."
To a public well-versed in the particulars of the disaster, the scene would have been understood to encompass the aftermath of the crew's abandonment, focusing on the moment when all hope seemed lost—the Argus reappeared two hours later and rescued those who remained.
The author Rupert Christiansen
points out that the painting depicts more figures than had been on the raft at the time of the rescue—including corpses which were not recorded by the rescuers. Instead of the sunny morning and calm water reported on the day of the rescue, Géricault depicted a gathering storm and dark, heaving sea to reinforce the emotional gloom.
He used friends as models, most notably the painter Eugène Delacroix
(1798–1863), who modelled for the figure in the foreground with face turned downward and one arm outstretched. Two of the raft's survivors are seen in shadow at the foot of the mast; three of the figures were painted from life—Corréard, Savigny and Lavillette. Jamar posed nude for the dead youth shown in the foreground about to slip into the sea, and was also the model for two other figures.
According to Hubert Wellington, Delacroix—who would become the standard-bearer of French Romanticism after Géricault's death—wrote, "Géricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it. It made so tremendous an impression on me that when I came out of the studio I started running like a madman and did not stop till I reached my own room."
Géricault painted with small brushes and viscous oils, which allowed little time for reworking and were dry by the next morning. He kept his colours apart from each other: his palette consisted of vermilion
, white, naples yellow
, two different yellow ochres, two red ochres, raw sienna
, light red, burnt sienna, crimson lake, Prussian blue
, peach black
, ivory black
, cassel earth and bitumen. Bitumen has a velvety, lustrous appearance when first painted, but over a period of time discolours to a black treacle, while contracting and thus creating a wrinkled surface, which cannot be renovated. As a result of this, details in large areas of the work can hardly be discerned today.
Géricault drew an outline sketch of the composition onto the canvas. He then posed models one at a time, completing each figure before moving onto the next, as opposed to the more usual method of working over the whole composition. The concentration in this way on individual elements gave the work both a "shocking physicality" and a sense of deliberate theatricality—which some critics consider an adverse effect. Over 30 years after the completion of the work, his friend Montfort recalled:
Working with little distraction, the artist completed the painting in 8 months; the project as a whole took 18 months.
s, from the Last Judgment
and Sistine Chapel ceiling
of Michelangelo
(1475–1564) and Raphael
's Transfiguration
, to the monumental approach of Jacques-Louis David
(1748–1825) and Antoine-Jean Gros
(1771–1835), to contemporary events. By the 18th century, shipwrecks had become a recognised feature of marine art
, as well as an increasingly common occurrence as more journeys were made by sea. Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789) created many such images, achieving naturalistic colour through direct observation—unlike other artists at that time—and was said to have tied himself to the mast of a ship in order to witness a storm.
Although the men depicted on the raft had spent 13 days adrift and suffered hunger, disease and cannibalism, Géricault pays tribute to the traditions of heroic painting and presents his figures as muscular and healthy. According to the art historian Richard Muther, there is still a strong debt to Classicism
in the work. The fact that the majority of the figures are almost naked, he wrote, arose from a desire to avoid "unpictorial" costumes. Muther observes that there is "still something academic in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by privation, disease, and the struggle with death".
The influence of Jacques-Louis David can be seen in the painting's scale, in the sculptural tautness of the figures and in the heightened manner in which a particularly significant "fruitful moment"—the first awareness of the approaching ship—is described. In 1793, David also painted an important current event with The Death of Marat
. His painting had an enormous political impact during the time of the revolution in France
, and it served as an important precedent for Géricault's decision to also paint a current event. David's pupil, Antoine-Jean Gros, had, like David, represented "the grandiosities of a school irredeemably associated with a lost cause", but in some major works, he had given equal prominence to Napoleon and anonymous dead or dying figures. Géricault had been particularly impressed by the 1804 painting Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Victims of Jaffa
, by Gros.
The young Géricault had painted copies of work by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758–1823), whose "thunderously tragic pictures" include his masterpiece, Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, where oppressive darkness and the compositional base of a naked, sprawled corpse obviously influenced Géricault's painting.
The foreground figure of the older man may be a reference to Ugolino from Dante
's Inferno—a subject that Géricault had contemplated painting—and seems to borrow from a painting of Ugolini by Henry Fuseli
(1741–1825) that Géricault may have known from prints. In Dante, Ugolino is guilty of cannibalism
, which was one of the most sensational aspects of the days on the raft. Géricault seems to allude to this through the borrowing from Fuseli. An early study for The Raft of the Medusa in watercolour
, now in the Louvre, is much more explicit, depicting a figure gnawing on the arm of a headless corpse.
Several English and American paintings including The Death of Major Pierson by John Singleton Copley
(1738–1815)—also painted within 2 years of the event—had established a precedent for a contemporary subject. Copley had also painted several large and heroic depictions of disasters at sea which Géricault may have known from prints: Watson and the Shark
(1778), in which a black man is central to the action, and which, like The Raft of the Medusa, concentrated on the actors of the drama rather than the seascape; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782
(1791), which was an influence on both the style and subject matter of Géricault's work; and Scene of a Shipwreck (1790s), which has a strikingly similar composition. A further important precedent for the political component was the works of Francisco Goya
, particularly his The Disasters of War
series of 1810–12, and his 1814 masterpiece The Third of May 1808
. Goya also produced a painting of a disaster at sea, called simply Shipwreck (date unknown), but although the sentiment is similar, the composition and style have nothing in common with The Raft of the Medusa. It is unlikely that Géricault had seen the picture.
expressed their distaste for what they described as a "pile of corpses," whose realism they considered a far cry from the "ideal beauty" incarnated by Girodet's Pygmalion and Galatea (which triumphed the same year). Géricault's work expressed a paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art and reality? Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie
, a French painter and contemporary of Géricault, was categorical: "Monsieur Géricault seems mistaken. The goal of painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel." The painting had fervent admirers too, including French writer and art critic Auguste Jal who praised its political theme, its liberal position (the advancement of the "negro", the critique of ultra-royalism), and its modernity
. For French historian Jules Michelet
, "our whole society is aboard the raft of the Medusa [...]."
The exhibition was sponsored by Louis XVIII
and featured nearly 1,300 individual paintings, 208 sculptures and numerous other engravings and architectural designs. The contemporary critic Frank Anderson Trapp suggested that the volume of work shown and the sheer scale of the event indicates the ambition behind the exhibition. Trapp notes that the fact that "100 grandiose history paintings [were included] in itself proclaimed a munificent government patronage", for aside from a few affluent competitors like Géricault, only those favoured by a major commission could afford the outlay of time, energy and money necessary for undertakings of this kind.
Géricault had deliberately sought to be both politically and artistically confrontational. Critics responded to his aggressive approach in kind, and their reactions were either ones of revulsion or praise, depending on whether the writer's sympathies favoured the Bourbon
or Liberal viewpoint. The painting was seen as largely sympathetic to the men on the raft, and thus by extension to the anti-imperial cause adopted by the survivors Savigny and Correard. The decision to place a black man at the pinnacle of the composition would have been controversial, and was an expression of Géricault's abolitionist
sympathies; the art critic Christine Riding has speculated that the painting's subsequent exhibition in London was planned to coincide with anti-slavery agitation there. The painting was a political statement; the incompetent captain was an inexperienced sailor, but a politically sound anti-Bonapartist
. According to contemporary art critic and curator Karen Wilkin
, Géricault's painting acts as a "cynical indictment of the bungling malfeasance of France's post-Napoleonic officialdom, much of which was recruited from the surviving families of the Ancien Régime".
The painting generally impressed the viewing public, although its subject matter repelled many, thus denying Géricault the popular acclaim which he had hoped to achieve. At the end of the exhibition, the painting was awarded a gold medal by the judging panel, yet they refrained from giving the work the greater prestige of being selected for the Louvre's national collection. Instead, Géricault was awarded a commission on the subject of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
, which he clandestinely offered (along with the fee) to Delacroix, whose finished painting he then signed as his own. Géricault retreated to the countryside, where he collapsed from exhaustion, and his work, having found no buyer, was rolled up and stored in a friend's studio.
Géricault arranged for the painting to be exhibited in London in 1820, where it was shown at William Bullock's Egyptian Hall
in Piccadilly
, London, from June 10 until the end of the year, and viewed by about 40,000 visitors. The reception in London was more positive than that in Paris, and the painting was hailed as representative of a new direction in French art
. In part, this was due to the manner of the painting's exhibition: in Paris it had initially been hung high in the Salon Carré—a mistake that Géricault recognised when he saw the work installed—but in London it was placed close to the ground, emphasising its monumental impact. There may have been other reasons for its popularity in England as well, including "a degree of national self-congratulation", the appeal of the painting as lurid entertainment, and two theatrical entertainments based around the events on the raft which coincided with the exhibition and borrowed heavily from Géricault's depiction. From the London exhibition Géricault earned close to 20,000 francs, which was his share of the fees charged to visitors, and substantially more than he would have been paid had the French government purchased the work from him. After the London exhibition, Bullock brought the painting to Dublin early in 1821, but the exhibition there was far less successful, in large part due to a competing exhibition of a moving panorama
, "The Wreck of the Medusa" by the Marshall brothers firm, which was said to have been painted under the direction of one of the survivors of the disaster.
The Raft of the Medusa was championed by the curator of the Louvre, comte de Forbin
who purchased it from Géricault's heirs after his death in 1824 for the museum, where the painting now dominates its gallery. The display caption tells us that "the only hero in this poignant story is humanity."
At some time between 1826 and 1830 American artist George Cooke
(1793–1849) made a copy of the painting in a smaller size, (130.5 x 196.2 cm; approximately 4 ft × 6 ft), which was shown in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. to crowds who knew about the controversy surrounding the shipwreck. Reviews favoured the painting, which also stimulated plays, poems, performances and a children's book. It was bought by a former admiral, Uriah Phillips, who left it in 1862 to the New York Historical Society
, where it was miscatalogued as by Gilbert Stuart
and remained inaccessible until the mistake was uncovered in 2006, after an enquiry by Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, a professor of art history at the University of Delaware
. The university's conservation department undertook restoration of the work.
Because of deterioration in the condition of Géricault's original, the Louvre in 1859–60 commissioned two French artists, Pierre-Désiré Guillemet and Étienne-Antoine-Eugène Ronjat, to make a full size copy of the original for loan exhibitions.
In the autumn of 1939, the Medusa was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. A scenery truck from the Comédie-Française
transported the painting on the to Versailles in the night of September 3. Some time later, the Medusa was moved to the Château de Chambord
where it remained until after the end of the Second World War.
In its insistence on portraying an unpleasant truth, The Raft of the Medusa marked the beginning of the Romantic movement
in French painting, and "laid the foundations of an aesthetic revolution" against the prevailing Neoclassical
style. Géricault's compositional structure and depiction of the figures are classical, but the contrasting turbulence of the subject represents a significant change in artistic direction and creates an important bridge between Neoclassical and Romantic styles. By 1815, Jacques-Louis David, then in exile in Brussels, was both the leading proponent of the popular history painting
genre, which he had perfected, and a master of the Neoclassical style. In France, both history painting and the Neoclassical style continued through the work of Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
, François Gérard
, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
, Pierre-Narcisse Guérin
—teacher of both Géricault and Delacroix—and other artists who remained committed to the artistic traditions of David and Nicolas Poussin
.
In his introduction to The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, Hubert Wellington wrote about Delacroix's opinion of the state of French painting just prior to the Salon of 1819. According to Wellington, "The curious blend of classic with realistic outlook which had been imposed by the discipline of David was now losing both animation and interest. The master himself was nearing his end, and exiled in Belgium. His most docile pupil, Girodet, a refined and cultivated classicist, was producing pictures of astonishing frigidity. Gérard, immensely successful painter of portraits under the Empire—some of them admirable—fell in with the new vogue for large pictures of history, but without enthusiasm."
The Raft of the Medusa contains the gestures and grand scale of traditional history painting; however, it presents ordinary people, rather than heroes, reacting to the unfolding drama. Géricault's raft pointedly lacks a hero, and his painting presents no cause beyond sheer survival. The work represents, in the words of Christine Riding, "the fallacy of hope and pointless suffering, and at worst, the basic human instinct to survive, which had superseded all moral considerations and plunged civilised man into barbarism".
The unblemished musculature of the central figure waving to the rescue ship is reminiscent of the Neoclassical, however the naturalism of light and shadow, the authenticity of the desperation shown by the survivors and the emotional character of the composition differentiate it from Neoclassical austerity. It was a further departure from the religious or classical themes of earlier works because it depicted contemporary events with ordinary and unheroic figures. Both the choice of subject matter and the heightened manner in which the dramatic moment is depicted are typical of Romantic painting—strong indications of the extent to which Géricault had moved from the prevalent Neoclassical movement.
Hubert Wellington said that while Delacroix was a lifelong admirer of Gros, the dominating enthusiasm of his youth was for Géricault. The dramatic composition of Géricault, with its strong contrasts of tone and unconventional gestures, stimulated Delacroix to trust his own creative impulses on a large work. Delacroix said, "Géricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it." The painting's influence is seen in Delacroix's The Barque of Dante
(1822) and reappears as inspiration in Delacroix's later works, such as The Shipwreck of Don Juan (1840).
According to Wellington, Delacroix's masterpiece of 1830, Liberty Leading the People
, springs directly from Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's own Massacre at Chios
. Wellington wrote that "While Géricault carried his interest in actual detail to the point of searching for more survivors from the wreck as models, Delacroix felt his composition more vividly as a whole, thought of his figures and crowds as types, and dominated them by the symbolic figure of Republican Liberty which is one of his finest plastic inventions."
The art and sculpture historian Albert Elsen believed that The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Massacre at Chios provided the inspiration for the grandiose sweep of Auguste Rodin
's monumental sculpture The Gates of Hell
. He wrote that "Delacroix's Massacre at Chios and Géricault's Raft of the Medusa confronted Rodin on a heroic scale with the innocent nameless victims of political tragedies ... If Rodin was inspired to rival Michelangelo's Last Judgment, he had Géricault's Raft of the Medusa in front of him for encouragement."
While Gustave Courbet
(1819–1877) could be described as an anti-Romantic painter, his major works like A Burial at Ornans (1849–50) and The Artist's Studio
(1855) owe a debt to The Raft of the Medusa. The influence is not only in Courbet's enormous scale, but in his willingness to portray ordinary people and current political events, and to record people, places and events in real, everyday surroundings. The 2004 exhibition at the Clark Art Institute
, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet: The Bruyas Collection from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier, sought to compare the 19th-century Realist
painters Courbet, Honoré Daumier
(1808–1879), and early Édouard Manet
(1832–1883) with artists associated with Romanticism, including Géricault and Delacroix. Citing The Raft of the Medusa as an instrumental influence on Realism, the exhibition drew comparisons between all of the artists. The critic Michael Fried sees Manet directly borrowing the figure of the man cradling his son for the composition of Angels at the Tomb of Christ.
The influence of The Raft of the Medusa was felt by artists beyond France. Francis Danby
, a British painter born in Ireland, probably was inspired by Géricault's picture when he painted Sunset at Sea after a Storm in 1824, and wrote in 1829 that The Raft of the Medusa was "the finest and grandest historical picture I have ever seen".
The subject of marine tragedy was undertaken by J. M. W. Turner
(1775–1851), who, like many English artists, probably saw Géricault's painting when it was exhibited in London in 1820. His A Disaster at Sea (c. 1835) chronicled a similar incident, this time a British catastrophe, with a swamped vessel and dying figures also placed in the foreground. Placing a coloured figure in the centre of the drama was revisited by Turner, with similar abolitionist
overtones, in his The Slave Ship (1840).
The Gulf Stream (1899), by the American artist Winslow Homer
(1836–1910), replicates the composition of The Raft of the Medusa with a damaged vessel, ominously surrounded by sharks and threatened by a waterspout. Like Géricault, Homer makes a black man the pivotal figure in the scene, though here he is the vessel's sole occupant. A ship in the distance mirrors the Argus from Géricault's painting. The move from the drama of Romanticism to the new Realism is exemplified by the stoic resignation of Homer's figure. The man's condition, which in earlier works might have been characterised by hope or helplessness, has turned to "sullen rage".
In the early 90's, sculptor John Connell
, in his Raft Project, a collaborative project with painter Eugene Newmann, recreated The Raft of the Medusa by making life-sized sculptures out of wood, paper and tar and placing them on a large wooden raft.
Remarking on the contrast between the dying figures in the foreground and the figures in the mid-ground waving towards the approaching rescue ship, the French art historian Georges-Antoine Borias wrote that Géricault's painting represents, "on the one hand, desolation and death. On the other, hope and life."
For Kenneth Clark
, The Raft of the Medusa "remains the chief example of romantic pathos expressed through the nude; and that obsession with death, which drove Géricault to frequent mortuary chambers and places of public execution, gives truth to his figures of the dead and the dying. Their outlines may be taken from the classics, but they have been seen again with a craving for violent experience."
Today, a bronze bas-relief
of The Raft of the Medusa by Antoine Étex
adorns Géricault's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery
in Paris.
The Raft of the Medusa is an oil painting
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
of 1818–1819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
(1791–1824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. At 491 cm × 716 cm (193.3 in × 282.3 in), it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate
Frigate
A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
on July 5, 1816. At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation, dehydration, cannibalism and madness. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain perceived to be acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
. In reality, King Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
had no say in the captain's appointment, since, then as now, monarchs were not directly involved in appointments made to vessels like a naval frigate. The vicomte de Chaumareys' appointment as captain of the Méduse would have been a routine naval appointment, made within the Ministry of the Navy.
In choosing the tragedy as subject matter for his first major work—an uncommissioned depiction of an event from recent history—Géricault consciously selected a well-known incident that would generate great public interest and help launch his career. The event fascinated the young artist, and before he began work on the final painting, he undertook extensive research and produced many preparatory sketches. He interviewed two of the survivors, and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. His efforts took him to morgues and hospitals where he could view, first-hand, the colour and texture of the flesh of the dying and dead. As the artist had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 Paris Salon, attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. However, it established his international reputation, and today is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the Romantic movement
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in French painting.
Although The Raft of the Medusa retains elements of the traditions of history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
, in both its choice of subject matter and its dramatic presentation, it represents a break from the calm and order of the then-prevailing Neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
school. Géricault's work attracted wide attention almost immediately from its first showing, and was subsequently exhibited in London. It was acquired by the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
soon after the artist's early death at the age of 32. The painting's influence can be seen in the works of Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
, J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
, Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...
and Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
.
Background
Frigate
A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
Méduse departed from Rochefort
Rochefort, Charente-Maritime
Rochefort is a commune in southwestern France, a port on the Charente estuary. It is a sub-prefecture of the Charente-Maritime department.-History:...
, bound for the Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
ese port of Saint-Louis
Saint-Louis, Senegal
Saint-Louis, or Ndar as it is called in Wolof, is the capital of Senegal's Saint-Louis Region. Located in the northwest of Senegal, near the mouth of the Senegal River, and 320 km north of Senegal's capital city Dakar, it has a population officially estimated at 176,000 in 2005. Saint-Louis...
. She headed a convoy of three other ships: the storeship
Combat stores ship
Combat stores ships, or Storeships were originally a designation given to captured ships in the Age of Sail and immediately afterward, used to stow supplies and other goods for naval purposes. Modern combat store ships are operated by the United States Navy...
Loire, the brig
Brig
A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...
Argus and the corvette
Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...
Écho. Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys had been appointed captain
Ranks in the French Navy
The rank insignia of the French Navy are worn on shoulder straps of shirts and white jackets, and on sleeves for navy jackets and mantels....
of the frigate despite having scarcely sailed in 20 years. The frigate's mission was to accept the British return of Senegal under the terms of France's acceptance of the Peace of Paris. The appointed French governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien-Désiré Schmaltz
Julien-Désiré Schmaltz
Colonel Julien-Désiré Schmaltz or Julien Schmaltz was a French colonial administrator and governor of Senegal from 1816 to 1820....
, and his wife Reine Schmaltz were among the passengers.
In an effort to make good time, the Méduse overtook the other ships, but due to its speed it drifted 100 miles (161 km) off course. On July 2, it ran aground on a sandbank off the West African coast, near today's Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
. The collision was widely blamed on the incompetence of De Chaumereys, a returned émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
who lacked experience and ability, but had been granted his commission as a result of an act of political preferment. Efforts to free the ship failed, so, on July 5, the frightened passengers and crew started an attempt to travel the 60 miles (97 km) to the African coast in the frigate's six boats. Although the Méduse was carrying 400 people, including 160 crew, there was space for only about 250 in the boats. The remainder of the ship's complement—at least 146 men and one woman—were piled onto a hastily-built raft, that partially submerged once it was loaded. Seventeen crew members opted to stay aboard the grounded Méduse. The captain and crew aboard the other boats intended to tow the raft, but after only a few miles the raft was turned loose. For sustenance the crew of the raft had only a bag of ship's biscuit (consumed on the first day), two casks of water (lost overboard during fighting) and a few casks of wine.
According to critic Jonathan Miles, the raft carried the survivors "to the frontiers of human experience. Crazed, parched and starved, they slaughtered mutineers, ate their dead companions and killed the weakest." After 13 days, on July 17, 1816, the raft was rescued by the Argus by chance—no particular search effort was made by the French for the raft. By this time only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, died of starvation, or thrown themselves into the sea in despair. The incident became a huge public embarrassment for the French monarchy, only recently restored to power after Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
's defeat in 1815
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
.
Description
The Raft of the Medusa portrays the moment when, after 13 days adrift on the raft, the remaining 15 survivors view a ship approaching from a distance. According to an early British reviewer, the work is set at a moment when "the ruin of the raft may be said to be complete". The painting is on a monumental scale of 491 × 716 cm (193.3 × 282.3 in), so that most of the figures rendered are life-sized and those in the foreground almost twice life-size, pushed close to the picture plane and crowding onto the viewer, who is drawn into the physical action as a participant.The makeshift raft is shown as barely seaworthy as it rides the deep waves, while the men are rendered as broken and in utter despair. One old man holds the corpse of his son at his knees; another tears his hair out in frustration and defeat. A number of bodies litter the foreground, waiting to be swept away by the surrounding waves. The men in the middle have just viewed a rescue ship; one points it out to another, and an African crew member, Jean Charles, stands on an empty barrel and frantically waves his handkerchief to draw the ship's attention.
The pictorial composition of the painting is constructed upon two pyramidal structures. The perimeter of the large mast on the left of the canvas forms the first. The horizontal grouping of dead and dying figures in the foreground forms the base from which the survivors emerge, surging upward towards the emotional peak, where the central figure waves desperately at a rescue ship.
The viewer's attention is first drawn to the centre of the canvas, then follows the directional flow of the survivors' bodies, viewed from behind and straining to the right. According to the art historian Justin Wintle, "a single horizontal diagonal rhythm [leads] us from the dead at the bottom left, to the living at the apex." Two other diagonal lines are used to heighten the dramatic tension. One follows the mast and its rigging and leads the viewer's eye towards an approaching wave that threatens to engulf the raft, while the second, composed of reaching figures, leads to the distant silhouette of the Argus, the ship that eventually rescued the survivors.
Géricault's palette is composed of pallid flesh tones, and the murky colours of the survivors' clothes, the sea and the clouds. Overall the painting is dark and relies largely on the use of sombre, mostly brown pigments, a palette that Géricault believed was effective in suggesting tragedy and pain. The work's lighting has been described as "Caravaggesque
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
", after the Italian artist closely associated with tenebrism
Tenebrism
Tenebrism, from the Italian tenebroso , is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image...
—the use of violent contrast between light and dark. Even Géricault's treatment of the sea is muted, being rendered in dark greens rather than the deep blues that could have afforded contrast with the tones of the raft and its figures. From the distant area of the rescue ship, a bright light shines, providing illumination to an otherwise dull brown scene.
Research and preparatory studies
Géricault was captivated by accounts of the widely publicised 1816 shipwreck, and realised that a depiction of the event might be an opportunity to establish his reputation as a painter. Having decided to proceed, he undertook extensive research before he began the painting. In early 1818, he met with survivors Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, and their emotional descriptions of their experiences largely inspired the tone of the final painting. According to the art historian Georges-Antoine Borias, "Géricault established his studio across from Beaujon hospital. And here began a mournful descent. Behind locked doors he threw himself into his work. Nothing repulsed him. He was dreaded and avoided."Earlier travels had exposed Géricault to victims of insanity and plague, and while researching the Méduse his effort to be historically accurate and realistic led to an obsession with the stiffness
Rigor mortis
Rigor mortis is one of the recognizable signs of death that is caused by a chemical change in the muscles after death, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff and difficult to move or manipulate...
of corpses. To achieve the most authentic rendering of the flesh tones of the dead, he made sketches of bodies in the morgue of the Hospital Beaujon, studied the faces of dying hospital patients, brought severed limbs back to his studio to study their decay, and for a fortnight drew a severed head, borrowed from a lunatic asylum and stored on his studio roof.
He worked with Corréard, Savigny and another of the survivors, the carpenter Lavillette, to construct an accurately detailed scale model of the raft, which was reproduced on the finished canvas, even showing the gaps between some of planks. Géricault posed models, compiled a dossier of documentation, copied relevant paintings by other artists, and went to Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
to study the sea and sky. Despite suffering from fever, he travelled to the coast on a number of occasions to witness storms breaking on the shore, and a visit to artists in England afforded further opportunity to study the elements while crossing the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
.
He drew and painted numerous preparatory sketches while deciding which of several alternative moments of the disaster he would depict in the final work. The painting's conception proved slow and difficult for Géricault, and he struggled to select a single pictorially-effective moment to best capture the inherent drama of the event.
Among the scenes he considered were the mutiny against the officers from the second day on the raft, the cannibalism that occurred after only a few days, and the rescue. Géricault ultimately settled on the moment, recounted by one of the survivors, when they first saw, on the horizon, the approaching rescue ship Argus—visible in the upper right of the painting—which they attempted to signal. The ship, however, passed by. In the words of one of the surviving crew members, "From the delirium of joy, we fell into profound despondency and grief."
To a public well-versed in the particulars of the disaster, the scene would have been understood to encompass the aftermath of the crew's abandonment, focusing on the moment when all hope seemed lost—the Argus reappeared two hours later and rescued those who remained.
The author Rupert Christiansen
Rupert Christiansen
Rupert Christiansen is an English writer, journalist and critic, grandson of Arthur Christiansen and son of Kay and Michael Christiansen . Born in London, he was educated at Millfield and King's College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in English...
points out that the painting depicts more figures than had been on the raft at the time of the rescue—including corpses which were not recorded by the rescuers. Instead of the sunny morning and calm water reported on the day of the rescue, Géricault depicted a gathering storm and dark, heaving sea to reinforce the emotional gloom.
Final work
Géricault, who had just been forced to break off a painful affair with his aunt, shaved his head and from November 1818 to July 1819 lived a disciplined monastic existence in his studio in the Faubourg du Roule, being brought meals by his concierge and only occasionally spending an evening out. He and his 18-year-old assistant, Louis-Alexis Jamar, slept in a small room adjacent to the studio; occasionally there were arguments and on one occasion Jamar walked off; after two days Géricault persuaded him to return. In his orderly studio, the artist worked in a methodical fashion in complete silence and found that even the noise of a mouse was sufficient to break his concentration.He used friends as models, most notably the painter Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
(1798–1863), who modelled for the figure in the foreground with face turned downward and one arm outstretched. Two of the raft's survivors are seen in shadow at the foot of the mast; three of the figures were painted from life—Corréard, Savigny and Lavillette. Jamar posed nude for the dead youth shown in the foreground about to slip into the sea, and was also the model for two other figures.
According to Hubert Wellington, Delacroix—who would become the standard-bearer of French Romanticism after Géricault's death—wrote, "Géricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it. It made so tremendous an impression on me that when I came out of the studio I started running like a madman and did not stop till I reached my own room."
Géricault painted with small brushes and viscous oils, which allowed little time for reworking and were dry by the next morning. He kept his colours apart from each other: his palette consisted of vermilion
Vermilion
Vermilion is an opaque orangish red pigment, similar to scarlet. As a naturally occurring mineral pigment, it is known as cinnabar, and was in use around the world before the Common Era began. Most naturally produced vermilion comes from cinnabar mined in China, and vermilion is nowadays commonly...
, white, naples yellow
Naples Yellow
Naples yellow, also called antimony yellow, can range from a somewhat muted, or earthy, reddish yellow pigment to a bright light yellow, and is the chemical compound lead antimonate. Its chemical composition is Pb2/Pb32. It is also known as jaune d'antimoine. It is one of the oldest synthetic...
, two different yellow ochres, two red ochres, raw sienna
Sienna
Sienna is a form of limonite clay most famous in the production of oil paint pigments. Its yellow-brown colour comes from ferric oxides contained within...
, light red, burnt sienna, crimson lake, Prussian blue
Prussian blue
Prussian blue is a dark blue pigment with the idealized formula Fe718. Another name for the color Prussian blue is Berlin blue or, in painting, Parisian blue. Turnbull's blue is the same substance but is made from different reagents....
, peach black
Peach black
Peach black is a grey-black pigment originally obtained from burnt peach stones. Other early formulations included aniline black and soot from burnt petroleum or wax. Current formulations contain zinc oxide instead. According to some sources, the pigment has a tendency to green, making it useful...
, ivory black
Bone char
Bone char, also known as bone black, ivory black, animal charcoal, or abaiser, is a granular material produced by charring animal bones. To prevent the spread of mad-cow disease, the skull and spine are never used...
, cassel earth and bitumen. Bitumen has a velvety, lustrous appearance when first painted, but over a period of time discolours to a black treacle, while contracting and thus creating a wrinkled surface, which cannot be renovated. As a result of this, details in large areas of the work can hardly be discerned today.
Géricault drew an outline sketch of the composition onto the canvas. He then posed models one at a time, completing each figure before moving onto the next, as opposed to the more usual method of working over the whole composition. The concentration in this way on individual elements gave the work both a "shocking physicality" and a sense of deliberate theatricality—which some critics consider an adverse effect. Over 30 years after the completion of the work, his friend Montfort recalled:
- [Géricault's method] astonished me as much as his intense industry. He painted directly on the white canvas, without rough sketch or any preparation of any sort, except for the firmly traced contours, and yet the solidity of the work was none the worse for it. I was struck by the keen attention with which he examined the model before touching brush to canvas. He seemed to proceed slowly, when in reality he executed very rapidly, placing one touch after the other in its place, rarely having to go over his work more than once. There was very little perceptible movement of his body or arms. His expression was perfectly calm ....
Working with little distraction, the artist completed the painting in 8 months; the project as a whole took 18 months.
Influences
The Raft of the Medusa fuses many influences from the Old MasterOld Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
s, from the Last Judgment
The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)
The Last Judgment is a canonical fresco by the Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo executed on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City...
and Sistine Chapel ceiling
Sistine Chapel ceiling
The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, at the commission of Pope Julius II, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the large Papal Chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV after whom it is named...
of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
(1475–1564) and Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
's Transfiguration
Transfiguration (Raphael)
The Transfiguration is considered the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. It was left unfinished by Raphael, and is believed to have been completed by his pupil, Giulio Romano, shortly after Raphael's death in 1520...
, to the monumental approach of Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
(1748–1825) and Antoine-Jean Gros
Antoine-Jean Gros
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros , also known as Jean-Antoine Gros, was both a French History and neoclassical painter.-Early life and training:...
(1771–1835), to contemporary events. By the 18th century, shipwrecks had become a recognised feature of marine art
Marine art
Marine art or maritime art is any form of figurative art that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre particularly strong from the 17th to 19th centuries...
, as well as an increasingly common occurrence as more journeys were made by sea. Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789) created many such images, achieving naturalistic colour through direct observation—unlike other artists at that time—and was said to have tied himself to the mast of a ship in order to witness a storm.
Although the men depicted on the raft had spent 13 days adrift and suffered hunger, disease and cannibalism, Géricault pays tribute to the traditions of heroic painting and presents his figures as muscular and healthy. According to the art historian Richard Muther, there is still a strong debt to Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
in the work. The fact that the majority of the figures are almost naked, he wrote, arose from a desire to avoid "unpictorial" costumes. Muther observes that there is "still something academic in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by privation, disease, and the struggle with death".
The influence of Jacques-Louis David can be seen in the painting's scale, in the sculptural tautness of the figures and in the heightened manner in which a particularly significant "fruitful moment"—the first awareness of the approaching ship—is described. In 1793, David also painted an important current event with The Death of Marat
The Death of Marat
The Death of Marat is a 1793 painting in the Neoclassical style by Jacques-Louis David, and is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. This work depicts the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat lying dead in his bath on 13 July 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday...
. His painting had an enormous political impact during the time of the revolution in France
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, and it served as an important precedent for Géricault's decision to also paint a current event. David's pupil, Antoine-Jean Gros, had, like David, represented "the grandiosities of a school irredeemably associated with a lost cause", but in some major works, he had given equal prominence to Napoleon and anonymous dead or dying figures. Géricault had been particularly impressed by the 1804 painting Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Victims of Jaffa
Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Victims of Jaffa
Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa is an 1804 painting commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte from Antoine-Jean Gros to portray an event during the Egyptian Campaign...
, by Gros.
The foreground figure of the older man may be a reference to Ugolino from Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Inferno—a subject that Géricault had contemplated painting—and seems to borrow from a painting of Ugolini by Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
(1741–1825) that Géricault may have known from prints. In Dante, Ugolino is guilty of cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
, which was one of the most sensational aspects of the days on the raft. Géricault seems to allude to this through the borrowing from Fuseli. An early study for The Raft of the Medusa in watercolour
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
, now in the Louvre, is much more explicit, depicting a figure gnawing on the arm of a headless corpse.
Several English and American paintings including The Death of Major Pierson by John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects...
(1738–1815)—also painted within 2 years of the event—had established a precedent for a contemporary subject. Copley had also painted several large and heroic depictions of disasters at sea which Géricault may have known from prints: Watson and the Shark
Watson and the Shark
Watson and the Shark is the title of a 1778 oil painting by John Singleton Copley, depicting the rescue of Brook Watson from a shark attack in Havana, Cuba. The original of three versions by Copley is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.....
(1778), in which a black man is central to the action, and which, like The Raft of the Medusa, concentrated on the actors of the drama rather than the seascape; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782
The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782
The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782 is the title of a 1783 oil-on-canvas painting by Boston-born American artist John Singleton Copley...
(1791), which was an influence on both the style and subject matter of Géricault's work; and Scene of a Shipwreck (1790s), which has a strikingly similar composition. A further important precedent for the political component was the works of Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, particularly his The Disasters of War
The Disasters of War
The Disasters of War are a series of 8280 prints in the first published edition , for which the last two plates were not available. See "Execution". prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya...
series of 1810–12, and his 1814 masterpiece The Third of May 1808
The Third of May 1808
The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808...
. Goya also produced a painting of a disaster at sea, called simply Shipwreck (date unknown), but although the sentiment is similar, the composition and style have nothing in common with The Raft of the Medusa. It is unlikely that Géricault had seen the picture.
Exhibition and reception
The Raft of the Medusa was first shown at the 1819 Paris Salon, under the generic title Scène de Naufrage (Scene of Shipwreck), although its real subject would have been unmistakable for contemporary viewers. Géricault's Raft was the star at the Salon of 1819: "It strikes and attracts all eyes" (Le Journal de Paris). Louis XVIII visited the Salon three days before the opening, and reportedly said "", freely translated as "Monsieur Géricault, your shipwreck is certainly no disaster". Critics were divided: the horror and "terribilità" of the subject exercised fascination, but devotees of classicismClassicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
expressed their distaste for what they described as a "pile of corpses," whose realism they considered a far cry from the "ideal beauty" incarnated by Girodet's Pygmalion and Galatea (which triumphed the same year). Géricault's work expressed a paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art and reality? Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie
Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie
Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie was a French painter of the Troubadour style. He was a friend of the painter Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. Among his patrons were Joséphine de Beauharnais, who bought his The Tragic Love of Francesca da Rimini for her gallery at Château de...
, a French painter and contemporary of Géricault, was categorical: "Monsieur Géricault seems mistaken. The goal of painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel." The painting had fervent admirers too, including French writer and art critic Auguste Jal who praised its political theme, its liberal position (the advancement of the "negro", the critique of ultra-royalism), and its modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
. For French historian Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...
, "our whole society is aboard the raft of the Medusa [...]."
The exhibition was sponsored by Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
and featured nearly 1,300 individual paintings, 208 sculptures and numerous other engravings and architectural designs. The contemporary critic Frank Anderson Trapp suggested that the volume of work shown and the sheer scale of the event indicates the ambition behind the exhibition. Trapp notes that the fact that "100 grandiose history paintings [were included] in itself proclaimed a munificent government patronage", for aside from a few affluent competitors like Géricault, only those favoured by a major commission could afford the outlay of time, energy and money necessary for undertakings of this kind.
Géricault had deliberately sought to be both politically and artistically confrontational. Critics responded to his aggressive approach in kind, and their reactions were either ones of revulsion or praise, depending on whether the writer's sympathies favoured the Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
or Liberal viewpoint. The painting was seen as largely sympathetic to the men on the raft, and thus by extension to the anti-imperial cause adopted by the survivors Savigny and Correard. The decision to place a black man at the pinnacle of the composition would have been controversial, and was an expression of Géricault's abolitionist
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
sympathies; the art critic Christine Riding has speculated that the painting's subsequent exhibition in London was planned to coincide with anti-slavery agitation there. The painting was a political statement; the incompetent captain was an inexperienced sailor, but a politically sound anti-Bonapartist
Bonapartism
Bonapartism is often defined as a political expression in the vocabulary of Marxism and Leninism, deriving from the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire...
. According to contemporary art critic and curator Karen Wilkin
Karen Wilkin
Karen Wilkin is a New York-based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th century modernism. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, to Rome...
, Géricault's painting acts as a "cynical indictment of the bungling malfeasance of France's post-Napoleonic officialdom, much of which was recruited from the surviving families of the Ancien Régime".
The painting generally impressed the viewing public, although its subject matter repelled many, thus denying Géricault the popular acclaim which he had hoped to achieve. At the end of the exhibition, the painting was awarded a gold medal by the judging panel, yet they refrained from giving the work the greater prestige of being selected for the Louvre's national collection. Instead, Géricault was awarded a commission on the subject of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Sacred Heart
The Sacred Heart is one of the most famous religious devotions to Jesus' physical heart as the representation of His divine love for Humanity....
, which he clandestinely offered (along with the fee) to Delacroix, whose finished painting he then signed as his own. Géricault retreated to the countryside, where he collapsed from exhaustion, and his work, having found no buyer, was rolled up and stored in a friend's studio.
Géricault arranged for the painting to be exhibited in London in 1820, where it was shown at William Bullock's Egyptian Hall
Egyptian Hall
For the Glasgow building see The Egyptian Halls.The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, was an Exhibition hall built in the ancient Egyptian style in 1812, to the designs of Peter Frederick Robinson.-History:...
in Piccadilly
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...
, London, from June 10 until the end of the year, and viewed by about 40,000 visitors. The reception in London was more positive than that in Paris, and the painting was hailed as representative of a new direction in French art
French art
French art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from the geographical area of France...
. In part, this was due to the manner of the painting's exhibition: in Paris it had initially been hung high in the Salon Carré—a mistake that Géricault recognised when he saw the work installed—but in London it was placed close to the ground, emphasising its monumental impact. There may have been other reasons for its popularity in England as well, including "a degree of national self-congratulation", the appeal of the painting as lurid entertainment, and two theatrical entertainments based around the events on the raft which coincided with the exhibition and borrowed heavily from Géricault's depiction. From the London exhibition Géricault earned close to 20,000 francs, which was his share of the fees charged to visitors, and substantially more than he would have been paid had the French government purchased the work from him. After the London exhibition, Bullock brought the painting to Dublin early in 1821, but the exhibition there was far less successful, in large part due to a competing exhibition of a moving panorama
Moving panorama
The moving panorama was a relative, more in concept than design, to panoramic painting, but proved to be more durable than its fixed and immense cousin. The word “panorama” is derived from the Greek words “to see” and “all.” Robert Barker invented the first panorama to describe his impressive...
, "The Wreck of the Medusa" by the Marshall brothers firm, which was said to have been painted under the direction of one of the survivors of the disaster.
The Raft of the Medusa was championed by the curator of the Louvre, comte de Forbin
Louis Nicolas Philippe Auguste de Forbin
Louis Nicolas Philippe Auguste, comte de Forbin was the French painter and antiquary who succeeded Vivant-Denon as curator of the Musée du Louvre and the other museums of France....
who purchased it from Géricault's heirs after his death in 1824 for the museum, where the painting now dominates its gallery. The display caption tells us that "the only hero in this poignant story is humanity."
At some time between 1826 and 1830 American artist George Cooke
George Cooke (painter)
George Cooke was an itinerant United States painter who specialized in portrait and landscape paintings and was one of the South's best known painters of the mid nineteenth century...
(1793–1849) made a copy of the painting in a smaller size, (130.5 x 196.2 cm; approximately 4 ft × 6 ft), which was shown in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. to crowds who knew about the controversy surrounding the shipwreck. Reviews favoured the painting, which also stimulated plays, poems, performances and a children's book. It was bought by a former admiral, Uriah Phillips, who left it in 1862 to the New York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library located in New York City at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Founded in 1804 as New York's first museum, the New-York Historical Society presents exhibitions, public programs and research that...
, where it was miscatalogued as by Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
and remained inaccessible until the mistake was uncovered in 2006, after an enquiry by Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, a professor of art history at the University of Delaware
University of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...
. The university's conservation department undertook restoration of the work.
Because of deterioration in the condition of Géricault's original, the Louvre in 1859–60 commissioned two French artists, Pierre-Désiré Guillemet and Étienne-Antoine-Eugène Ronjat, to make a full size copy of the original for loan exhibitions.
In the autumn of 1939, the Medusa was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. A scenery truck from the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
transported the painting on the to Versailles in the night of September 3. Some time later, the Medusa was moved to the Château de Chambord
Château de Chambord
The royal Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France is one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinct French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures.The building, which was never...
where it remained until after the end of the Second World War.
Interpretation and legacy
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in French painting, and "laid the foundations of an aesthetic revolution" against the prevailing Neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
style. Géricault's compositional structure and depiction of the figures are classical, but the contrasting turbulence of the subject represents a significant change in artistic direction and creates an important bridge between Neoclassical and Romantic styles. By 1815, Jacques-Louis David, then in exile in Brussels, was both the leading proponent of the popular history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
genre, which he had perfected, and a master of the Neoclassical style. In France, both history painting and the Neoclassical style continued through the work of Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...
, François Gérard
François Gerard
François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard was a French painter born in Rome, where his father occupied a post in the house of the French ambassador. His mother was Italian. As a baron of the Empire he is sometimes referred to as Baron Gérard.-Life:François Gérard was born in Rome, on 12 March 1770, to...
, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson January 5, 1767 – December 9, 1824), was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who was part of the beginning of the Romantic movement by adding elements of eroticism through his paintings...
, Pierre-Narcisse Guérin
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin
Pierre-Narcisse, baron Guérin was a French painter.-Biography:Guérin was born in Paris.A pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault, he carried off one of the three grands prix offered in 1796, in consequence of the competition not having taken place since 1793...
—teacher of both Géricault and Delacroix—and other artists who remained committed to the artistic traditions of David and Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
.
In his introduction to The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, Hubert Wellington wrote about Delacroix's opinion of the state of French painting just prior to the Salon of 1819. According to Wellington, "The curious blend of classic with realistic outlook which had been imposed by the discipline of David was now losing both animation and interest. The master himself was nearing his end, and exiled in Belgium. His most docile pupil, Girodet, a refined and cultivated classicist, was producing pictures of astonishing frigidity. Gérard, immensely successful painter of portraits under the Empire—some of them admirable—fell in with the new vogue for large pictures of history, but without enthusiasm."
The Raft of the Medusa contains the gestures and grand scale of traditional history painting; however, it presents ordinary people, rather than heroes, reacting to the unfolding drama. Géricault's raft pointedly lacks a hero, and his painting presents no cause beyond sheer survival. The work represents, in the words of Christine Riding, "the fallacy of hope and pointless suffering, and at worst, the basic human instinct to survive, which had superseded all moral considerations and plunged civilised man into barbarism".
The unblemished musculature of the central figure waving to the rescue ship is reminiscent of the Neoclassical, however the naturalism of light and shadow, the authenticity of the desperation shown by the survivors and the emotional character of the composition differentiate it from Neoclassical austerity. It was a further departure from the religious or classical themes of earlier works because it depicted contemporary events with ordinary and unheroic figures. Both the choice of subject matter and the heightened manner in which the dramatic moment is depicted are typical of Romantic painting—strong indications of the extent to which Géricault had moved from the prevalent Neoclassical movement.
Hubert Wellington said that while Delacroix was a lifelong admirer of Gros, the dominating enthusiasm of his youth was for Géricault. The dramatic composition of Géricault, with its strong contrasts of tone and unconventional gestures, stimulated Delacroix to trust his own creative impulses on a large work. Delacroix said, "Géricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it." The painting's influence is seen in Delacroix's The Barque of Dante
The Barque of Dante
The Barque of Dante, sometimes known as Dante and Virgil in Hell, is the first major painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, and is one of the works signalling a shift in the character of narrative painting from Neo-Classicism towards the Romantic movement...
(1822) and reappears as inspiration in Delacroix's later works, such as The Shipwreck of Don Juan (1840).
According to Wellington, Delacroix's masterpiece of 1830, Liberty Leading the People
Liberty Leading the People
Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X of France. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricouleur flag of the French Revolution in one hand and...
, springs directly from Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's own Massacre at Chios
The Massacre at Chios
The Massacre at Chios is the second major oil painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix. The work is more than thirteen feet high, and shows some of the horror of the wartime destruction visited on the Island of Chios...
. Wellington wrote that "While Géricault carried his interest in actual detail to the point of searching for more survivors from the wreck as models, Delacroix felt his composition more vividly as a whole, thought of his figures and crowds as types, and dominated them by the symbolic figure of Republican Liberty which is one of his finest plastic inventions."
The art and sculpture historian Albert Elsen believed that The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Massacre at Chios provided the inspiration for the grandiose sweep of Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
's monumental sculpture The Gates of Hell
The Gates of Hell
The Gates of Hell is a monumental sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from "The Inferno", the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It stands at 6 m high, 4 m wide and 1 m deep and contains 180 figures. The figures range from...
. He wrote that "Delacroix's Massacre at Chios and Géricault's Raft of the Medusa confronted Rodin on a heroic scale with the innocent nameless victims of political tragedies ... If Rodin was inspired to rival Michelangelo's Last Judgment, he had Géricault's Raft of the Medusa in front of him for encouragement."
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...
(1819–1877) could be described as an anti-Romantic painter, his major works like A Burial at Ornans (1849–50) and The Artist's Studio
The Artist's Studio
The Artist's Studio : A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life is an 1855 oil painting on canvas by Gustave Courbet. It is located in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France....
(1855) owe a debt to The Raft of the Medusa. The influence is not only in Courbet's enormous scale, but in his willingness to portray ordinary people and current political events, and to record people, places and events in real, everyday surroundings. The 2004 exhibition at the Clark Art Institute
Clark Art Institute
The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, usually referred to simply as "The Clark", is an art museum with a large and varied collection located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States...
, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet: The Bruyas Collection from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier, sought to compare the 19th-century Realist
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
painters Courbet, Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
(1808–1879), and early Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
(1832–1883) with artists associated with Romanticism, including Géricault and Delacroix. Citing The Raft of the Medusa as an instrumental influence on Realism, the exhibition drew comparisons between all of the artists. The critic Michael Fried sees Manet directly borrowing the figure of the man cradling his son for the composition of Angels at the Tomb of Christ.
The influence of The Raft of the Medusa was felt by artists beyond France. Francis Danby
Francis Danby
Francis Danby was an Irish painter of the Romantic era. His imaginative, dramatic landscapes were comparable to those of John Martin. Danby initially developed his imaginative style while he was the central figure in a group of artists who have come to be known as the Bristol School...
, a British painter born in Ireland, probably was inspired by Géricault's picture when he painted Sunset at Sea after a Storm in 1824, and wrote in 1829 that The Raft of the Medusa was "the finest and grandest historical picture I have ever seen".
The subject of marine tragedy was undertaken by J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
(1775–1851), who, like many English artists, probably saw Géricault's painting when it was exhibited in London in 1820. His A Disaster at Sea (c. 1835) chronicled a similar incident, this time a British catastrophe, with a swamped vessel and dying figures also placed in the foreground. Placing a coloured figure in the centre of the drama was revisited by Turner, with similar abolitionist
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
overtones, in his The Slave Ship (1840).
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
(1836–1910), replicates the composition of The Raft of the Medusa with a damaged vessel, ominously surrounded by sharks and threatened by a waterspout. Like Géricault, Homer makes a black man the pivotal figure in the scene, though here he is the vessel's sole occupant. A ship in the distance mirrors the Argus from Géricault's painting. The move from the drama of Romanticism to the new Realism is exemplified by the stoic resignation of Homer's figure. The man's condition, which in earlier works might have been characterised by hope or helplessness, has turned to "sullen rage".
In the early 90's, sculptor John Connell
John Connell
John Connell was a contemporary American artist. His works included sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing....
, in his Raft Project, a collaborative project with painter Eugene Newmann, recreated The Raft of the Medusa by making life-sized sculptures out of wood, paper and tar and placing them on a large wooden raft.
Remarking on the contrast between the dying figures in the foreground and the figures in the mid-ground waving towards the approaching rescue ship, the French art historian Georges-Antoine Borias wrote that Géricault's painting represents, "on the one hand, desolation and death. On the other, hope and life."
For Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...
, The Raft of the Medusa "remains the chief example of romantic pathos expressed through the nude; and that obsession with death, which drove Géricault to frequent mortuary chambers and places of public execution, gives truth to his figures of the dead and the dying. Their outlines may be taken from the classics, but they have been seen again with a craving for violent experience."
Today, a bronze bas-relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
of The Raft of the Medusa by Antoine Étex
Antoine Étex
Antoine Étex was a French sculptor, painter and architect. He was born in Paris.He first exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1833, his work including a reproduction in marble of his "Death of Hyacinthus", and the plaster cast of his "Cain and his race cursed by God"...
adorns Géricault's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
in Paris.
External links
- The official painting record at the louvre website