August 10th, 1792
Géricault Life
The battle of August 10th, 1792, was fought on the doorstep of the Géricault family apartments in the Hôtel de Longueville. The painter Jacques Bertaux immortalized the battle in his painting Pris du palais des Tuileries, 10 août 1792 (Taking of the Tuileries Palace, 10 August 1792), which he presented at the Salon of 1793. The reproduction above is the frontispiece for the Précis Historique de la Révolution Française Assemblée Législative, 2nd, Edition by La Cretelle the Younger, Paris, 1804.
Théodore Géricault and August 10th, 1792
The aim of this article is not to provide a modern account of the battle for the Tuileries Palace and the attendant atrocities. Both are important and played critical roles in Théodore Géricault’s development. My view is that contemporary images, like the Bertaux reproduction above, and contemporary voices, such as John Money’s account of the battle of August 10th (presented elsewhere in this issue), best connect us to Théodore Géricault and his world. My goal here is to confirm two central ideas which are critical to our study of Géricault and his world, and to our understanding of how August 10th, 1792, affected Géricault and his family.
I contend that any discussion of Géricault, and the time in which he lived, will be deeply flawed if we fail to recognize the immense role engravings and prints played in all visual and material media of the time. Illustrations mattered – whether we are discussing Joseph Banks’ scientific discoveries, or illustrations for novels, periodicals, and almanachs. People like pictures. Illustrations played a key role in the economy of many cultural products – from wallpaper, to books, to government seals, to money, to ceramics, medals, and carvings of different kinds. Painting themselves might be reproduced as prints, or illustrations, or as paintings, or in miniature on snuff boxes, or appear on sets for theatre productions, or on fans. Paintings were simply one form of visual media. Prints, engravings, and illustrations were mass produced for popular consumption, and could also be prized works of art in their own right. The importance of media and of illustrations of all kinds is, of course, doubly important in any study of an artist of this time.
I have elsewhere stressed the importance of proximity and place. The changes which occurred in France, or Saint Domingue, were widely known. Histories were written and read. Proximity to specific events, however, connected individuals and their associates to these events on an immediate, personal level through the senses – through experience. Witnesses present during the battle of August 10th heard the alarm bells, the canons, and screams of agony; saw the smoke and flames rise from burning buildings and trees; and tasted the smoke of battle and scent of blood carried in the air.
We do not know which Géôricault relations were within the Hôtel de Longueville during the attack. However, the Géricault family apartments in the Hotel de Longueville involved the family in the battle of August 10th, 1792, all the same, in exactly the same way the attack and destruction of the Robillard plantation in Saint Domingue in 1791 made the family part of that revolution. For almost all people alive at the time, and after, August 10th, 1792, was a historical fact, not a firsthand experience. For Theodore Gericault’s family and others living near the Tuileries Palace, however, August 10th 1792, was a set of events which happened to them as people. The crowds massed in front of the Hôtel de Longueville; cannons set up in front of Brunton’s haberdashery on the Place du Carrousel fired upon the palace; Swiss Guards in the palace returned fire from windows in the Tuileries Palace; musket balls lodged in the walls of the Hôtel de Longueville and chipped away the stonework.
The sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the battle disappeared except as artists, writers and others did what they could to capture the moment and preserve it in time. Jean Baptiste Caruel (Géricault’s uncle), Anisson Duperon (the royal printer), and hundreds of others walked past the Tuileries Palace every day, through the Passage Longueville and along the rue Saint Nicaise and the rue Saint Thomas du Louvre. The attack became part of the shared experiences and shared memories of all who were present, and of their families.
My view is that the particularity of place, people, and events shaped Théodore Géricault as an individual and as an artist. The family business and apartments in the Hôtel de Longueville placed Théodore and his family at the center of some of the most important events of his time, events which his family members and others close to him experienced firsthand. The Bertaux engraving and other material records of the attack survived as well, and was recreated repeatedly in different media to further cement that attack within the public consciousness of the time, and to provide regular reminders to those directly affected of their experiences.
Readers may wish to turn to John Money’s rarely-cited, firsthand account of this immensely significant event to discover just what those present experienced that day and after. This issue’s article on the Louvre and the Vernets is also relevant.