1865 – Chesneau Géricault
Géricault Life
1812-1815 Portrait of Siméon Bonnesoeur-Bourginiere, Théodore Géricault, Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The John R. Van Derlip Fund and The William Hood Dunwoody Fund 65.38. Photo: Minneapolis Institute of Art
In the June issue of GLM I discussed Henri Moulin’s 1865 account of Théodore Géricault’s family in Mortain, Normandy. Moulin, a Géricault relation, was replying to Ernest Chesneau’s “Some Biographical Notes on Géricault” published prominently on the front page of Le Constitutionnel, on April 21st, 1865. Le Constitutionnel was, at this time, one of the most important and widely-read newpapers in France. Moulin’s letter was printed in Le Mortainais. These two articles published in the spring of 1865 provided the world with the first detailed descriptions of Théodore Géricault’s family life and roots in western Normandy. Read Chesneau’s original article below.
“Some Biographical Notes on Géricault”
It is not to discuss the Romantic movement and what emerged from it that we speak today of Théodore Géricault. Géricault was, in fact, the precursor of Romanticism; and if we are compelled to recognize the influence of Mr. Auguste upon Eugène Delacroix, it would be much graver to misunderstand the immense impact that the painter of the Raft of the Medusa exercised upon the painter of the Barque of Dante, and at his beginnings, the Massacre of Chios and of Liberty. However, we do not propose to try in any way to measure this influence, to calculate what Romanticism owed to the energetic initiative of Géricault, or how his energies were directed away from his true goal. We will not go further here in the study of the works of Géricault; we have treated these diverse questions over several years and as our opinions have not changed much since then, we could only repeat ourselves to no gain for the reader. (1.) So, as the title of this article indicates, you will not find anything here beyond several biographical notes about the master who struck the first blow, and the roughest, at the school of David. (1. La peinture française au XIXe siècle: Les Chefs d’École; David, Gros, Géricault…Paris; Didier, éditeur)
Art historians long ago established that Géricault was born in Rouen, in 1791, and that he was the son of an advocate in the employ of that city. Our own efforts permit us to add that while Géricault was born in Rouen, his father was originally from Saint-Cyr du Bailleul, near Mortain in the department of Manche. Géricault’s grandfather, a distinguished man, was allied with one of the first families of the country by his marriage to a Miss Caruel. Two other young women of the same Caruel family also married: one to Mr. Clouard, and the other to Mr. Bonnesœur de la Bourginière, who was a member of the Constitutional Assembly. The Clouard and Bonnesœur families still possess a certain number of Géricault paintings today. We know, of course, that the artist died very young – on January 18, 1824. His father, however, survived him and possessed several works which by different testaments passed with his fortune to the family of his wife. There was even a court case over these which was adjudicated in Rouen. Mr. Boinvilliers, today a senator, pleaded for the validity of the will and triumphed over his adversaries.
Géricault left the city of his birth to enter the Imperial College in Paris. He would return each August, however, sometimes to Rouen – to stay at the home of his father, and sometimes to Mortain, to the home of his uncle Bonnesœur. These details are not of minor significance to the history of this talent, for his stays in Mortain left an ineffaceable impression upon the soul of the child. He was, as we all were as students on vacation, very rebellious regarding the homework work demanded of us during these hours of officially sanctioned freedom; the study of Greek and Latin seemed to him a burdensome iniquity. To rebalance his universe, he rewarded himself with long walks in the countryside and extended reveries face-to-face with nature, during which he quite unconsciously expanded his understanding of the picturesque.
How do we retrace the history of this slow formation of genius among superior men? We enjoy the product of their spirit moving to its full maturity, and in the swirling whirlwinds which entrap man and disperses him in a thousand preoccupations, it is all that one can do to verify the emotions which animate a great artist. How moving it would be, however, to rediscover, to reassess, to group the passing reflections, the vague meditations that depose one to another their fecund residue at the base of a young soul, preparing the earth, irrigating the soil for a fertile future!
Some reliable information has come to me which allows me to fix the frame, and examine the thinking of Géricault at this beautiful moment of his adolescence.
A peak high above dominates the little town of Mortain. On the summit of this rock, the aspect west looks out upon a large valley which follows a straight line out to the horizon. There in the mists that rise from the sea, eight leagues in the distance, one can distinguish the shores of Mont Saint-Michel and the spire which carries its name. Géricault passed many hours in silent contemplation before this immense view.
From far away he watched the scattered clouds rise little by little above the ocean; the one after the other, gathering in the blue – bit by bit, spreading like a veil over the expanse, extinguishing the brilliant reflections of the sun upon the sea, on the beaches, and then the cliffs, a growing shadow climbing the sky and following the wide path of four or five leagues which leads them upon Mortain. In this journey the storm collects itself, reforming, growing always more somber – and the child, pencil in hand, drew. In a fold of an album he carried, he traced with a naïve hand guided by a stirred heart the spectacle of these great troubling immensities, magnificent flashes, splinters of light, formidable oppositions of shadows and light, in half-tints fading, varied to infinity by the constant energy moving these undulating lines, enormous swirls incessantly transformed by the actions of the tempest.
Much later, Géricault painted that terrible sky of the Raft of the Medusa in a single day. Without doubt, he returned to the great motion of clouds which he had so often observed and drawn in his youth, preserved as part of him, as if engraved upon his retina.
The great artist who, the first, returned to the study of the masters, who copied them with passion, rendering account to their own processes, and in turn, made for himself a technique, large, supple, and responsive to his slightest thoughts, pursuing with an equal solicitude, the assimilation, the precise possession of living nature. Skies, seas, countrysides, people, animals, he drew all with the same love, and I must here provide proof of this practice. Struck one day by the features of a peasant near Mortain, keen to preserve a memory, the child asked for a pencil, a pen, something of som kind to draw with, and finding nothing, he took a knife and with it sketched his model in the thick crust of a buckwheat loaf.
From his time spent in Rouen, Géricault retained just one lasting memory. The house of his father was close by the workshop of a blacksmith. We do not presume too much to assert think that it was here, in the heart of this forge, that Géricault’s lifelong love of beautiful and powerful Norman horses was born. His lithographic work includes a great number of studies of horses which, in many instances, originated very probably in memories of time spent close-by this workshop as a youth. For this favor, the blacksmith one day received a princely reward. Watching the young artist draw and paint in a style so fresh, so rapid, and at the same time with an accuracy of which he could be a good judge, the blacksmith asked of the artist a very simple thing – to paint him a signboard. Géricault happily consented.
The signboard, once completed and prominently put on display, attracted the attention of an Englishman, who promptly entered the workshop and proposed to purchase it. The honorable blacksmith excused himself, refusing. He recounted how he had come into possession of this painting and declared that he could not release it for any price. The blacksmith put so much energy into his resistance that the collector refused to abandon his hope of taking possession of the sign, and offered for it the price of thirty pounds sterling. The next day, the blacksmith, feeling slightly embarrassed, felt the need to speak of the generous offer, which seemed to him crazy. Seeing the artist, he related his adventure with the Englishman who coveted his signboard and who had offered him eight hundred francs. “Really! Then, sell it,” réplied Gericault, “I’ll make you another.”
I now present a brief summary of the life of Géricault. After leaving the Imperial College, he entered the studio of Carle Vernet, where he did little more than cross the threshold. This elegant painter, son of Joseph, and father of Horace Vernet, “son of the king, father of the king, never the king, “ as he said of himself in a parody of the celebrated phrase, had nothing to teach this fiery, young man, more concerned with grandeur and truth than an easy and airy form of painting.
So, Géricault left to enter into the studio of Guérin, the atelier which would become the staging point for the romantic revolt. The condisciples of the artist were, in a short period of time, the gentlemen Léon Cogniet, Champmartin, Henriquel Dupont, Ary Scheffer and Eugène Delècroix. Guérin, we know, did everything possible to deter the artistic aspirations of the youth, whose audacity appeared to the master to be simply and entirely absurd.
Géricault’s first exhibition was in 1812. At the Salon, he presented the Officer of the Guides, in which the horse is executed so dramatically. In 1814, he presented the Wounded Cuirassier leaving the fray. We need not dwell upon the shrieks these paintings call forth from the mouths of the sons and grandsons of David. During the interval between these two Salons, the artist put aside his palette and entered the Maison Rouge du Roi (the King’s Household) as a musketeer in 1814. During the Hundred Days, Gericault and his companions escorted Louis XVIII as far as Bethune. His regiment was decommissioned there and Géricault returned to painting. He made a trip to Italy in 1817. In 1819, the artist presented the Raft of the Medusa, which he exhibited again in London – making the trip to England for this occasion.
“Following the example of the great artists of the Renaissance,” writes M.F. Villot, “Géricault wanted to be at the same time a painter and a sculptor. He made clay models of several figures, including a flayed horse, and had a project to produce an equestrian statue. He was equally interested in painting a composition representing the slave trade, and upon an immense canvas in the form of a panorama, the opening of the gates of the Inquisition in Spain by the French. But a grave affection which had attacked him several times, and which he had neglected, suddenly took on a mortal character. He fell into a state of frightening exhaustion and died without bringing to fruition the grand ideas conceived by his great imagination.” (Notice les tableaux de l’Ecole française du Louvre:)
The Louvre possesses the principal paintings of Géricault. Some collectors have in their galleries some copies after the masters, some drawings, some variations of the Raft of the Medusa. Notably in Mortain, Ms. Clouard carefully preserves a copy of the Plague of Marseilles, after Delroy the son, a variation of the Raft, an Officer of the Guides, a draft or unfinished sketch, and a small painting that we know of under the name of the Emperor’s Gray Horse, which may well be a portrait. In addition, Mr. Moulin, a relation of the Bonnesœur family, has three portraits by Géricault in his possession: the portrait of Bonnesœur of the Assembly, one of his son, and a self-portrait the artist completed of himself.
The glory of Géricault, who died so young at thirty-three, is secure today, despite the counter-currents of opinion. He has passed the test of time, displaying no weakness. That must be our excuse for adding small details such as these to his biography; for nothing which clarifies the moral genesis of a great artist can be considered unimportant.
Ernest Chesneau, Le Constitutionnel April 21, 1865.