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Théodore Géricault

Imagine a young man of 27, clutching the tools and materials of an artist, making his way into a dank basement beneath a prison. This is Théodore Géricault who has paid for the privilege of coming to paint the severed heads of criminals.

When we think of emotions, many of us might tend towards love, hope, excitement. But horror and distaste are emotions too.

The Romantic movement included artists who were drawn to the macabre. Later, this tendency developed into what was called Gothic and it touched both writers and artists.  Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in the same year that Gericault made his way to that prison basement.

Not all of Gericault's subjects were so gruesome, but most were infused with high emotion and drama. Even his portraits tended to be set with a dark and glowering background.

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But it was a scandal in July 1816 which gave rise to Gericault's perhaps most celebrated work.

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The Raft of the Medusa

1819

The French frigate Méduse had run aground 60 miles off the coast of Mauritania, en route to Senegal. There were insufficient boats for everyone on board so a raft was hastily built for some 147 passengers. The raft was rescued 13 days later, but only 15 people were still alive. The survivors told tales of murder, insanity and cannibalism. Louis XVIII was wrongly held responsible by the French populace.

Gericault painted this huge canvas (490cm x 716cm) for exhibition at the Paris Salon in 1819, to establish himself as a painter on the grand scale. But it flew in the face of classical ideas of suitable subjects for art and notions of beauty, and the French public was repelled by it.

When Gericault took it to London for an exhibition a year later it was heralded as a sign of a new wave of art. Few things in art and life are simple though. The British acclaim for this work might have had as much to do with anti-French sentiments (the subject was seen as critical of the French monarchy), and a growing taste in Great Britain for melodrama.

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