Théodore GERICAULT (Rouen, 1791 - Paris, 1824) - Lot 518

Théodore GERICAULT (Rouen, 1791 - Paris, 1824) Sketch for the Officer of the Imperial Guard chasseurs à cheval de la Garde impériale, chargeant ; on verso a copy after Jouvenet's Descente de from Jouvenet's Descente de croix Double-sided canvas, unframed 53.5x43 cm Provenance : - Géricault estate sale, Paris, Hôtel de Bullion (Me Parmentier), November 2-3, 1824 (Philippe Grunchec remembers seeing the purchase slip for this sale in the name of Feuillet de Conches among his descendants in the 1970s); - Collection Félix Feuillet de Conches (1798-1887); Collection of his son-in-law Charles Jagerschmidt (1820-1894) ; - Always remained in this family. Bibliography : - Charles Clément, Géricault. Etude biographique et critique avec le catalog raisonné de l'œuvre du master, Paris, 1868 and 1879, no. 43 (L'Officier de Chasseurs) and 174 (Descente de Croix), it mentions that that it belongs to Félix Feuillet de Conches; - Hans A. Luthy, "Géricaults kopien nach Tizian" in Offentlichen Kunstsammlung Basel, Basel, 1976, pp. 189-199; - Philippe Grunchec, Tout l'œuvre peint de Géricault, Paris, Flammarion, 1978, p.50, nos. 45a and 45b (a copy is shown on p.147, no. A194); - Germain Bazin, Théodore Géricault: étude critique, documents et catalog raisonné, tome II, Paris, 1987, p.298 and p.438, n°329 (Descente de Croix) and tome III, Paris, 1986, p. 52, pp.184-185, n°821 (L'Officier de Chasseurs); - exhibition catalog Géricault, Kamakura, Kyoto, Fukuoka, 1987-1988, p.39, reproduced fig. C ; - Philippe Grunchec, Tout l'œuvre peint de Géricault, Paris, 1991, no. 45a and 45b, reproduced; - catalog for the exhibition Les chevaux de Géricault, Paris, Musée de la Vie romantique, May 15 to to September 15, 2024, not exhibited, quoted p.28 and reproduced p.29, fig.12. With this double-sided canvas, Géricault, barely twenty-one years old, pays homage to the masters of the past, and invented Modernity. He breaks the codes of the search for the ideal beauty of the neoclassicism then dominant. The portrayal of his young lieutenant, an anonymous hero plunged in the upheavals of the Empire, transforms a banal fact, a military genre scene, into an epic into an epic historical tableau. It is the first powerful image of French Romanticism, seven years before the Raft of the Medusa. The reverse shows the Descent from the Cross, taken from the famous composition by Jean Jouvenet's famous 1696 composition for the Capucines church (Place Vendôme), which entered the Académie Royale and then to the Louvre in 1796. It covers a portrait of a man infrared examination. Many artists-in-training reuse their canvas, not hesitating to to recycle previously painted supports for other studies. A student of Carle Vernet between 1808 and 1810, then of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a student at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris from 1811, Géricault also trained by copying the masters at the Musée Napoléon (Le Louvre): Titian, Le Sueur, Rubens, and also Jouvenet (the catalog of his studio sale lists 250 copies). It seems natural that our young painter should choose the Descent from the Cross, considered to be considered the pinnacle of French painting, in which Jouvenet blends the influence of Rubens the legacy of Poussin and Le Brun. In a way, one hundred and ten years apart, Jouvenet and Géricault are confronted with the same problem: how to move away from classicism for the former, and neoclassicism for the latter, neoclassicism for the latter, which had become academic and sterile, by reinterpreting Rubens for the vigor and vitality of his work. the vigor and vitality of his art. It's also worth noting that both artists were born in Rouen, which may have led Géricault's interest in his compatriot's work. He copies it with powerful material and a bold touch, astonishing in a work of this type and a harbinger of his own style. On the other side of the support, he quickly sketches a first thought of the chasseur officer on horseback. the liveliness and virtuosity of his brushwork conveying the movement and ardor of the chosen subject. . It was with the large format (3.49 x 2.66 m) now in the Louvre that Géricault, then aged 21 years old, first exhibited at the Salon in 1812. According to Clément, the idea for the subject an encounter with a gray horse on the road to Saint-Cloud. The animal, rearing up inspired him to magnify the scene and give it a historical significance. historical significance. It was at this time that the Empire suffered its first setbacks in the Russian campaign. This type of This type of staging was traditionally devoted to equestrian portraits of generals, such as David's works by David depicting Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass, or by Gros illustrating Murat at the Battle of Eylau, transposed