1845 Blanc – Géricault II
Géricault Life
1841 Le naufrage de Don Juan the (detail) Eugène Delacroix, Louvre.
Charles Blanc published his biography of Théodore Géricault in 1845. Read the second part of Charles Blanc’s important study of Géricault translated into English below.
Géricault
“…However, instead of continuing his serious studies, Géricault abruptly abandoned painting to enroll in the King’s Musketeers. This was in 1814, when the Bourbons returned to the throne. There existed then a class of wealthy, fashionable young men, “the gilded youth”, who joined this elite corps to publicly demonstrate their devotion to the restored monarchy; and who were also drawn by the secret pleasure conferred by wearing the magnificent uniform of gold and scarlet. Géricault had many friends among these young aristocrats and they persuaded him to set aside his brushes. Although he had an energetic and developed character, his will, such that he had one, was easily imposed upon. Géricault was naïve and a good comrade. Yet, he allowed himself to be easily seduced and led. He was taken by his artistic and chivalrous side and by flattering the great love which he had for action, and for all which was perilous and unknown. The desire grew in him to wear the dolman, which he had painted as a master, and to devote himself to this life of the parade ground and the attractions availed to an equerry of his turn and of his vigor. Later, Géricault repented of his weakness. He recognized that he had embraced a defiant insolence and vanity in this ostentatious devotion to the monarchy. But, loyal and obedient, Géricault accompanied Louis XVIII into exile during the interruption of the One Hundred Days, and he remained under colors until the decommissioning of his corps.
Returning to his palette, the former royalist cavalier wished to do nothing but throw himself back into his studies. Full of an exalted admiration for the paintings of Gros, he spent hours before them lost in contemplation; we know that Géricault paid at least a thousand francs for the right to execute a copy of the Battle of Nazareth. He never pronounced, or would hear pronounced, the name of Gros with anything but respect. He spoke always of his works in tones of enthusiasm, in which hints of his own despair of ever attaining similar heights sometimes appeared. When we discuss the painting of horses, however, Géricault seems to me to have surpassed even Gros in one respect. Géricault is the first painter who, after observing the diverse equine races, finished by discovering the true expression of the horse in its most generic form. Carle Vernet chose finely-bred horses, Horace, the horses of troops; Gros produced the pure-blood Arabian, Vandermeulen the Danish horse with the large rump; Van Dyck, the Spanish horse with its sheep-like head. Géricault is perhaps the only one who painted the Horse. Just the same, nothing bestows upon Géricault greater honor than the open admiration which he easily displayed for the fine works of others, which demonstrates that his soul was incapable of jealousy. We know that in this matter he pushed righteousness to the point of utter ingenuousness. Whenever Géricault discovered some beauty in the work of an artist he felt a sincere pleasure in highlighting these elements. He did so often and there was a relaxed candor in his fidelity to accomplishment and quality. Employing the most assiduous care, Géricault copied mediocre works of artists much his inferior for the sole purpose of capturing the precious qualities within such a work, details which had escaped all eyes but his own. He was observed copying in oil simple watercolors, up to three times, which nobody deemed remarkable, simply to capture a small corner of sky or earth. Some cavalrymen might be off in the distance; and yet he felt compelled to award these figures the full justice of their fugitive allure.
However, it no longer sufficed for Géricault to continue studying in France. He believed he had to pay his tribute to ancient custom (which wags call a prejudice) and travel in Italy, a pilgrimage all the talented deemed necessary and which had greatly benefited Lesueur [the sculptor]. It was in 1817 that Géricault departed for Italy; and it is certain that pains of the heart played a part in his desire to spend time in the spacious countryside around Rome. Arriving in this nation of illustrious designers changed Géricault profoundly. He took in the frescoes of Michelangelo and of many others; the effaced tones of these paintings of the church, stripped of their brilliance; age, the smoke of censers altering even their colors, all this seduced him. Open to change and impressionable, he began to doubt his own power; he began to wonder if his proximity to these colossuses was increasing their distance, and he made a deliberate choice to use greys and browns. Returning from Italy, Géricault readily mocked color; he joked, if not about Rubens himself, then at least about his methods, and he spoke of pink tones with an ironic lightness and a smile of disdain. While it is true that visiting Italy is good for certain men who, having nothing to lose, cannot but gain from contact with well-crafted and beautiful things, augmenting their small patrimonies with clusters of petty thefts which critics ignore. When they return to France it is with an extraordinary aptitude for Virgins, Martyrs, and Assumptions; their minds are filled with an enormous number of images of Joseph and the baby Jesus, which their departmental council-generals never cease commissioning and subsidizing. Talented men, however, risk greatly the loss of their originality from contact with all these dead celebrities, with whom it is not possible to enter into discussion, and who impose their beauty upon those who contemplate them. Several geniuses from the north could visit Florence, Siena, or Rome with impunity to admire Giotto, Perugino, and Simon Memni, for good reason, and still return with their original, unique talents and weaknesses intact. Rubens, for example, managed to remain Flemish, and even acquired greater nobility. Poussin, one who spent the greatest part of his life as an artist in Rome, succeeded in conserving the French tradition of which he was the most powerful personification. But for those who did not arrive with their genius fully formed, those men without such strong consistency, both morally and physically, and who were ready to embrace all, these men could not help but be transformed. Géricault, with his nervous nature, open to impressions, was easily forced to submit to external influences. He believed he must rid himself, in effect, of those abilities as a colorist which had confirmed his exceptional talents. The momentous transformation was such that he no longer dared to compose horses in a natural state, dominated as he was by his memories of those horses which we find in the paintings of Jules Romain, or in the Attila of Raphael, solitary animals posed with thoughtful expressions, and designed solely, it seems, to appeal to the tastes of a pope.
The situation finally presented itself for Géricault to begin a great painting and take his place among the ranks of the masters. He chose for his subject the shipwreck of the Medusa. This tale of suffering, twenty times republished, impacted all souls then – this terrible subject which complemented perfectly the particular character of his genius. He prepared for the task with the most severe studies. Inspired by the aspect of death, he sought figures of desolation and was not afraid to race to hospitals to absorb transformations of sadness and despair. He even owed some of his anatomical preparations to the kindness of Mr. Dumoustier, since renowned for his works on phrenology.
All who have visited the Louvre know the Shipwreck of the Medusa. Those who have not viewed this great work can get a sense of the painting from the engraving by Reynolds. It is a scene of horror, illuminated by a ray of hope. Fifteen unfortunate souls, half-naked, skin livid, with sunken eyes and savage faces, are assembled in groups upon a raft broken and battered by the sea. Of the one hundred and forty-eight who were dispatched upon this frail craft, no more than fifteen remained, nourished for eight days by the flesh of those dead from hunger, or killed by sabre blows during a revolt which added to the mass of their misery. Suddenly, an artilleryman perceives a hint of canvas on the horizon; he gives a great cry, and like cadavers suddenly galvanized, they rise and extend their arms to the corner of the canvas, in which appears a sail. Those who possess some energy search frantically among the wreckage for some fabric to wave as a sign of distress. The result is that the figures of the painting rise together, and follow a general movement towards the highest point, where we find hope. Some, however, no longer have the will to live, and remain prone upon the planks of the raft half-covered by waves. Here a delirious young man tears at his hair, rolling upon the boards; there an old man holds his dead son upon his knees, speechless and immobile as if struck by lightning. Deaf to the voices of his companions who offer deliverance, indifferent to life, his heart closed – his eyes are fixed only on the waves of the ocean, waves which will be the mausoleum of his son, one eternally rocked by tempests, and in which there is no rest or repose!
That the dying are of the same tone as the dead, and that the ragged fabric, sails, mast, and cords are all of one color, compels us to congratulate the painter, because he could not have achieved by any other means this somber harmony, so necessary to the power of the emotions depicted within the same subject. Unity, that is the secret of striking impressions, and Gericault understood this so well. No single episode divides our interest, or distracts our attention, and if we return often to the almost petrified head of the old man, it is because this figure encapsulates the entire catastrophe.
It is a Negro who the artist places at the summit of the canvas, exhausting himself in his efforts to attract attention with his ragged banner. How shocking! This black is no longer trapped in the hold, and it is he who saves the crew! Do you not admire how this great calamity confirms, in an instant, the equality of all races? All these men are delivered by a single slave, men who disdained him in his station. And that this transpires on the same coast of Senegal where his brothers are taken and placed in servitude! What a noble idea to have reversed these roles thusly! Géricault, until his death, contemplated a great composition depicting the slave trade, and it was no accident that he selected one of these pariahs to occupy the culminating point of his painting.
Do not believe that the ideas of the painter exist only in the generous interpretations of critics. Do not believe that it is the imagination of the critic, who with his own gifts, enriches the artist by attributing to him treasures which he does not merit. The intentions which your eye discovers in a painting truly exist there, be sure of that. It is only within the nature of the painter to reproduce, on occasion, the thinking of his own time without conscience. Preoccupied with form, he translates, and in the process, forgets the ideas which have acted upon his own soul, and which are the spirit of his age. One can fairly say that it is the genius of his time which takes up the brush. It is thus that the great painter often expresses thoughts and ideas of which he is not fully aware, much like the echo of a mountain, which repeats the cries of the man and knows nothing of it.
Géricault was reproached for not indicating the nation and the condition of these figures. Critics asked: were they Greeks, or Romans? Are they Turks, or French? Beneath which sky did they sail? To which epoch of history, ancient or modern, does this terrible catastrophe belong? The reproach would assuredly be grave if historical exactitude were the first condition of a good painting. But in truth this would be a poor scruple – one that would bind us to a very great fidelity of costume when a drama is painted, even if it were taken from recent history. I imagine that he could have found someone from among the shipwrecked who could provide an exact account of the disaster, and thus prevent this tale from being confused with those of Bentekoë or any other. Mr. Corréard could write the journal of the shipwreck; Géricault could paint it. The first goal, when one takes up the palette, is it not to move? How, however, does one depict the costume of all these individuals? Do we think that this was easy to rediscover upon the submerged raft – where these unfortunates in pain, covered with rags for clothes, awaited a death without solace and without witness, and who had nothing any longer which was human but their misfortune?
And, in the end, what does it matter whether these here are Greeks or Romans, Turks or French? They are men; and it is by this that their misery touches us. For if the spectacle of a shipwreck interests us at all, it is because each one of us remembers fleeing from similar dangers, or feeling threatened in some way. The painter has thus accomplished his goal, which was not to imitate with his brush the catastrophes of the ocean, but to manage, by this imitation, to excite in our own souls a great terror.
What is lacking in the Shipwreck of the Medusa is a sense of the immensity of the sea. The little which we can view is truly of a rare beauty. Never have I seen a better painting of the ocean waters, so heavy and profound, where the corpses linger long upon the surface before sinking; waters which lose all transparency in this stormy weather, such that one can say without exaggeration that they appear almost solid. Even so, this magnificent execution still suffers from the absence of the impression produced when we see ocean and sky fuse across the canvas in the most complete manner.
…Pontum undique et undique pontum…*
( …The sea everywhere and everywhere the sea…)
I would prefer much smaller figures and nature much larger; the struggle would then be more unequal and more terrible. Eugène Delacroix sensed this perfectly when he composed his dramatic Scene of a Shipwreck, which he presented at the salon of 1841. In isolating his barque, and by refusing to provide a fixed point of reference on the borders of the frame, he seems to have profited from the error of Géricault. He does not have to modify his perspective except to augment the terror he wishes to produce in us. As for the rest, in the Medusa, we divine nothing in the waves which might agitate the air to move the cloth which calls for rescue. One sole action opens the mind, as well as the eye, to the extent of the abyss, and gives to the space the proportions of infinity. The imperceptible sail which we believe we see far away in the distance expands the immensity of the horizon and twists our hearts, adding the poetry of hope to the image, hope which men of all times pursue, however distant and inaccessible it may be.
The finishing of the Shipwreck of the Medusa is as beautiful as the poetry of the composition is breathtaking and terrible. Most agree that this canvas is one of the most prominent of the French school. It is rendered in the grand style with the breadth of Jouvenet, but with greater intensity. The touch is sure and firm, like that of Gros, and the passionate admirer of this great master knew how to apply the precept which Gros offered up so often, but which, however, is so difficult to follow: touch and leave. For the rest, the practices of Géricault cut into all the paintings of the school of David, which does not permit the density of anything but light and the doubling of difference of relief, and which, above all, fears stripping shadows of their transparency. Géricault, in departing from these principles, gave to his painting the vigor of aspect, and the solidity which resists the effects of time.
Géricault was modest, as are all men raised well; but he was fully aware, or, if you like, he had a presentiment of his genius; and one could even say, in a sense, that his modesty was nothing but a form of legitimate pride. If he dismissed the too generous elegies which his friends accorded his first works, it is because these works were, in all reality, no great thing to him, especially compared with those of which he dreamed. In his own view, the Shipwreck of the Medusa was nothing more than a preface for the great projects that occupied his thoughts; he had done no more but begin this series of terrible subjects in which his powerful nature found joy, and with which he wanted to move men. That is why he could not listen to praise for his Shipwreck of the Medusa without vexation, it was as if he feared this canvas would be the final word regarding his genius. When he removed it after the exhibition, having had no large studio spacious enough to accept it (he had painted it in the foyer of the Favart theatre), he begged Mr. Léon Cogniet to kindly take care of it and give it sanctuary in his studio on the Rue Grange-aux-Belles, asking this of him as a signal favor. We see how M. Cogniet, this other great artist, responded to this prayer.
For the rest, one cannot comprehend the strangeness of the judgements brought against the Shipwreck of the Medusa at this time. Reading these incredible appreciations which some dared then to print against the unfortunate Géricault, these seem designed to end criticism forever. Mr. Gault de Saint-Martin, who, in this epoch, was one of the great guardians of fame and renown in the arts, wrote in a review, which today must seem as curious as lines of high comedy, which we transcribe here without pity:
This painting does not seem to be noteworthy enough to command our attention. I hear everywhere that it depicts the shipwrecked of the Medusa. I swear that my own observations discern no evidence for this claim. I search the canvas for fear, sorrow, regret, ingratitude, hope, despair; I inquire, I reflect, I ask without cease: ‘Painting, what do you want of me?’ Not one part responds, endlessly forcing my spirit back to this first difficulty of presenting people trapped between life and death, without color, without character, without expressions, and almost all suffering from early corruption. Whatever the merit of the piece, in imagining the meaning he gives to it, it teaches too little, it does not have enough impact for me to say amidst the salon: ‘Here the miserable find eyes who weep for them.’
Géricault himself, I repeat, did not attach any great importance to his work. One of our friends, having encountered him at the salon of 1819, pointed at his Shipwreck with a finger and said “That is a great painting,” to Géricault replied: “that there? A great painting? It’s an easel painting. He continued – becoming more heated: “Ah! Painting, as I wish it, is painting with buckets of color upon walls one hundred feet wide.”
The works of Géricault can often be found in the collections of artists and of connoisseurs. Mr. Eugène Delacroix possesses several studies of the master, notably two magnificent copies of Rubens and of Paul Veronese. The one after Rubens is testament to Géricault’s dispositions regarding color. The tones are well finished, even if somewhat coldly. The halftones are between brown and blue, or, if you will, between Jordaëns and Van Dyck. The copy after Veronese is one of a ceiling painting, crowning one of the chambres of Louis XIV at Versailles, a ceiling full of light and movement, reproduced skillfully with the most beautiful effects of color. One sees also in the collection of Mr. Eugène Delacroix, a drawing of Jacob Blessing his Children, and several heads, grouped in the same frame, after Titian and Velazquez, heads full of color and of life, treated with a brush well-oiled and firm. Mr. Walferdin, the distinguished physician, possesses several drawings of the Medusa, drawing in ink of a great price, and which reveal to us the diverse modifications which the first thoughts of Géricault underwent…”
* Blanc quotes here the Jesuit poet, mathematician, and astronomer Charles Malapert, De Ventis liber I, Poemata, 1622, p. 73.
Read part III here.