Tête de cheval blanc

1812

Salon debut: “Officer of the Imperial Guard Chasseurs”

In 1812 Géricault sent “Portrait of Dieudonné” (now “Officer of the Imperial Guard Chasseurs Charging”, Louvre) to the Paris Salon. An artist unknown until then, said to have “hardly studied”, he at once drew the critics' attention: Boutard advised him to take up battle painting, Durdent called him “perhaps the best of all our painters”, and David himself noticed the picture.

1814

Salon of 1814: “Wounded Cuirassier” and cold reviews

At the Salon of 1814, held after Napoleon's fall, the “Officer” was shown paired with “Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Field of Battle”, the only reminder of a passing tragic and glorious era among the neutral subjects chosen by other artists. Critics either said nothing of Géricault's pictures or received them unfavorably.

December 1814

He buys a commission as a musketeer

Having recently evaded military service, in December 1814 Géricault, with the help of his father and uncle, bought a commission in the musketeer company commanded by Lauriston, a privileged military unit. His biographers find it hard to explain what motivated him.

1815

The Hundred Days: Louis XVIII's escort and flight to Normandy

During the Hundred Days Géricault was in the escort of the fleeing Louis XVIII and then, disguised as a peasant, made his way to Normandy, where he probably stayed until the middle of the summer of 1815.

autumn 1817

The book on the wreck of the Méduse reaches Géricault

In the autumn of 1817 the book “The Wreck of the Frigate Medusa” appeared, in which the eyewitnesses, the geographer-engineer Alexandre Corréard and the physician Henri Savigny, described the thirteen-day drift of the raft after the ship ran aground off the coast of Mauritania. The book reached Géricault, who saw in it the subject for the large painting he had long dreamed of.

1817–1818

Investigating the disaster: survivors, a model raft, morgues

Géricault re-created the event by studying the available materials and meeting witnesses: he got to know Corréard and Savigny, a carpenter from the Méduse made a scale model of the raft for him, and the artist modelled wax figures himself. He visited hospital morgues, drawing dead heads, emaciated bodies and severed limbs, and the preparation ended with a trip to Le Havre, where he painted studies of sea and sky.