1867 Clément Géricault
Géricault Life
Cavaliers & Amazones by the Lake, Alfred de Dreux, Louvre (1850-1875)
Charles Clément 1867
In this article, we present an overview of Charles Clément’s three-part essay on Théodore Géricault published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in the spring in March, April, and May of 1867. Each of these installments is signficant for different reasons.
The previous year, in 1866, Clément published a two-part catalogue of Géricault’s known works, also in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. These two studies by Clément would be published in a single volume in 1868, a volume we will discuss in detail in subsequent issues. In 1879, Clément published a third edition of his study of Géricault.
We provide a short translation of Clément’s first words, followed by a short description of each section. Our purpose here is introduce the three parts of Clément’s original biographical study, as it was published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in the spring of 1867. We discuss part of part III of Clément’s essay to help situate Clément within Géricault scholarship elsewhere in this issue.
Clément’s Géricault: Part I
“I trembled as I began this study, I freely admit. Indeed, never had I been as fearful, or as afflicted by the sense of my insufficiencies as I was at this moment, when I sought to render homage and justice to the genius of the greatest artist of our time, and end the stares which a distracted public cast upon his noble form. Géricault is our oldest contemporary. Yet, he is today either misunderstood or forgotten. Without soliciting imitation, without playing to the crowd, without aspiring to lead a school, he was content to do well. Simple and modest, he admired others, and was rarely satisfied with himself. He was not interested in playing a role, he did not pose; indeed it seems possible that he was quite unaware of himself. If he ever thought of posterity, it was only with the fear that he did not merit that which might be associated with his name. During my examination of this life, free of all ostentation, I asked myself more than once whether or not I was actually playing with an illusion, whether the form I had before my eyes was really that of a great artist…” Charles Clément, 1867, March, Gaz des Beaux Arts.
Charles Clément begins his 1867 biographical study of Théodore Géricault by declaring that the painter has been forgotten, or misunderstood by the French public. Clément also introduces the public to Géricault’s maternal uncle, Jean-Baptiste Caruel de Saint-Martin for the first time.
1867 March 1, Géricault Gazette des Beaux-Arts
Part II
In the second installment of his essay on Géricault of April, 1867, Clément describes the painter’s return from Italy to Paris in the fall of 1817. Clément describes Géricault’s life in Paris during this period, his studies for the Raft of the Medusa, and the public reception of his masterpiece at the Salon of 1819.
1867 April 1, Géricault Gazette des Beaux-Arts
Part III
In part III of his essay, published in May of 1867, Clément attacks Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet and describes the negative influence Charlet had upon Géricault from 1818 on. We examine Clément’s attack on Charlet which fills the opening pages of this section in detail elsewhere in this issue. Clément then describes Géricault’s time in London and the years leading to the painter’s death in 1824.
1867 May 1, Géricault Gazette des Beaux-Arts