BLOG 26 January 2024

Géricault bicentenaire 1824-2024

January 26th 2024 marks the 'bicentenaire de Théodore Géricault'. To honour Géricault and his oeuvre I will weekly post a work by him on instagram during this Géricault remembrance year.

On January 26, 1824, 200 years ago, the French painter Théodore Géricault died at the age of 32.
His enigmatic legacy, that incessantly puzzles all who research his oeuvre, keeps this painter very much alive to date…

Photography wasn't yet invented during his short life so there are no photos of Théodore Géricault, and no films where we can see and hear him. We can only see him through the eyes of his fellow artists.

1. Géricault by Horace Vernet
2. Géricault by Alexandre Colin
3. Géricault by Léon Cogniet
4. Géricault by Léon Cogniet
 
All shown portraits are from The Metropolitan Museum collection, New York.

BLOG 1 March 2024

Mazeppa

Most paintings by Géricault are known to me by publications. The bizarre thing with publications is that you can’t quite grasp the actual size of a painting.

Géricault painted ‘Mazeppa’ with so much vigour, passion and grandeur that this had to be a huge painting. To me this evidently was a wild life-sized horse, cruelly tied ‘back-to-back’ with Mazeppa.

In 2006 I stood eye to eye with this Mazeppa. The tiny painting measured 28.5 x 21.5 cm, mounted in a luxuriously gilded baroque frame, but still small.

I moved closer and closer, so close that I felt my eye lashes would touch the paint if I blinked.

This painting simply sucked me in, resistance was futile…I climbed the frame, stepped into the scene, took my sabre, and cut both Mazeppa and the horse free.

A true Géricault can do that to you...

Mazeppa legend or history?

Théodore Géricault
‘Mazeppa’ 1820-1823
28.5 x 21.5 cm private collection

BLOG 8 March 2024

 Tête de jeune garçon

I crave to follow his paint strokes on the canvas with my fingers, because these paint strokes are pure lust. My eyes and fingers follow the nose, the slightly opened mouth and then become completely entranced at the neck. Géricault caresses the sensuality of the neckline of this young sitter with his brush stroke. To define this perfect neckline, he uses the background colour and in a swirling motion his brush creates the perfect profile.
You might think, so what? But painting the background OVER the foreground was not done according to the classical rules of painting. By breaking the rules Géricault proves the opposite.

Tête de jeune garçon de profil
46,7 x 38,5 cm
± 1815-1817
Unsold at the auction of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection at Christie's in Paris, 2009

Sold  at Sotheby’s 30 October 2018 € 212.500.-

BLOG 29 March 2024

tête de cheval écorchée

Only recently I discovered this anatomical sketch by Géricault of a skinless horse.
I was pleasantly surprised by the coincidental resemblance of plaster castings of a donkey figurine that I’ve been making for my Musée prive (à emporter).

Théodore Géricault bicentenaire 1824-2024

1. Théodore Géricault
Étude d’une tête de cheval écorchée, vue de face
Paris, école nationale supérieure de Beaux-Arts (ENSBA)
42.6 x 28.8 cm
2. âne
3. l’âne, detail of Musée privé (à emporter), each 12.8 x 6.5 x 3.5 cm

BLOG 12 April 2024

Sketch Laure Bro

I recently came across this sketch by Géricault on the internet, it was sold at an auction in 2017. It’s one of several studies for the portrait of Laure Bro that Géricault painted around 1818-1820. Although this sketch is attributed to Géricault, this specific study of Laure Bro keeps confusing me. I blame it on AI (artificial intelligence)…
Zooming in on this sketch I notice that part of the back of the chair is missing (see pic. 2), typical AI error? Looking further down, the position of the feet doesn’t correspond with how Laure is leaning on the chair. You can faintly see the contours of her left leg under the dress, but the contours don’t correspond with the position of her left foot. And what is this ‘disc’ or pedestal on which she stands?
If you compare it with the finished portrait (see pic. 3), this sketch looks like someone told AI to produce a preliminary sketch ‘à la Géricault’ based on the portrait of Laure Bro….
With my AI frenzied mind, it looks like Laure (in this sketch) is placed on the foot of the side table (as seen in the portrait), and the side table is placed in front of the chair, which makes this a very confusing composition. And what’s going on with the missing part from the back of the chair?
It is a fact that Géricault made this sketch, but since AI entered the artworld, even I am tempted to doubt the authenticity of an authentic Géricault artwork.

Question AI, not art.

Théodore Géricault bicentenaire 1824-2024

1. Madame Bro en pied assise sur le bras d’un fauteuil
sold at auction in 2017, 22,8 x 14,8 cm (from: Artcurial website)

2. Madame Bro en pied assise sur le bras d’un fauteuil, DETAIL

3. Portrait de Laure Bro (née de Comères)
1818-1820, 45 x 55 cm, private collection (from: la folie d’un monde)

4. Étude pour le portrait de Madame Bro
1818-1820, 30,2 x 22,2 cm, private collection (from: Géricault, tome V)

5. Étude pour le portrait de Laure Bro (née de Comères)
1818-1820, 29,6 x 22,6 cm, private collection (from: Géricault, tome V)

BLOG 3 May 2024

Buste cabinier watercolour

This Géricault bicentenaire 1824-2024 project gets more exiting, weird, and confusing as it progresses…
Géricault has drawn me into military dress because it is so prominent in his work. I have been fact checking Helmets decorated with feathers or horsehair, studded harnesses, adorned pelisses all defining a specific military order.
Today my fact checking ended up scrolling through different styles of military epaulettes AND their tailormade boxes.
I was lured into this enchanting epaulette-web because of a sketch that was sold earlier this year at Ader auction house. It shows a mustached carabineer wearing a cuirass, helmet with red horsehair and epaulettes, French first empire (1804-1814)
It is described on their website as: ‘ANONYME. École française du XIX siècle’.
Estimated at € 150.-, 250.-, sold for € 8.320.-
But this very sketch is known to be by Théodore Géricault, and described in 1989 in Germain Bazin’s ‘Géricault etude critique et catalogue raisonné’. Why sell it as anonymous?
The deeper I delve into Géricault and his oeuvre, the more obvious his present importance becomes.
For the love of art it is crucial to keep questioning what has been, and is written about him and his oeuvre.
The epaulettes detour made my day, thanks to Géricault!

1. Théodore Géricault, Buste de carabinier (detail), pencil, watercolour and ink, 20x13 cm
2-8. epaulettes website Bertrand Malvaux
9. screenshot Ader sale
10. Germain Bazin, tome 3, page 190

BLOG 7 June 2024

Géricault GREEN

This child portrait by Géricault is presumably a portrait of young Alfred Dedreux (or de Dreux).  It is also known as ‘portrait d’enfant a la jaquette verte’.

A few months ago a watercolour of a 19^th century French soldier was sold at Ader auction house. The maker unknown. It is very likely to be by Géricault. (pic. 2)

It’s the striking green that so closely resembles the green of the chasseur’s uniform…the white collar and the epaulettes, the v-shaped neckline and then there are those melancholic eyes. Although the Chasseur looks away and Alfred looks straight at you, there’s that same feeling of melancholy. Beauty and pain, beauty in pain, guilt AND innocence? Trademarks of Géricault. Whatever it is, it’s mesmerizing.

I only know this child portrait from books (both colours and titles are different in each book), and I only know the soldier from the internet and a black and white photo in a book. So I have no idea if the colours are as similar as they seem. But I am convinced that both are from the same maker. And this maker is Théodore Géricault.  Correct me if I’m wrong.

1. Portrait présumé d’ Alfred de Dreux, dit aussi ‘portrait d’enfant a la jaquette verte’, 45,5 x 37,5 cm [book: ‘tout l’œuvre paint de Géricault’]

2. ‘Gendarme à cheval, en buste, sous la Restauration’ (period in France 1814-1830)
Watercolour, 27x 29,5 cm
Sold by Ader auction House
The portrayed soldier is in fact a ‘Chasseur à cheval de la garde Royal’

BLOG 28 June 2024

Olivier Bro

Géricault painted Olivier, the five year old son of his neighbours Colonel Louis Bro and Laure Bro, around 1818.
The boy is seated on a dog holding his father’s sword. His skeleton suit looks much like the military uniforms of his days.
Zooming in on the portrait you can see that there is a turquoise layer of paint under the mud-coloured background. Géricault used this same turquoise colour in the white of the eyes of Olivier. It seems unusual, but Géricault knew where and why to use hints of turquoise. The other typical Géricault thing is his way of painting the background over the foreground, a revolutionary painting statement at that time. Here he paints the background over Olivier’s right ear (where the turquoise is). He does an even more rebellious thing with the eyeball of Olivier’s right eye. Géricault paints Olivier’s eye in this order: he paints the white of the eye, the eyeball, and the eyelid. Then he paints the turquoise partially over the white of the eye and next he simply paints the eyeball OVER the eyelid. Géricault knows he is painting the impossible, but this isn’t a ‘slip of the brush’. This is deliberate, this is Géricault.
It gives the face depth; it gives it movement it makes it just that bit more alive and it makes you look, and think, twice.

I can’t help but think that Édouard Manet might have known this painting, because Manet’s ‘Le fifre’ resembles Olivier Bro in so many ways; the same ‘dull’ background, the buttons, the military uniform, the sword and the flute, the ear and the cold grown up military look in the eyes of these boys.
But it is said that the portraits of Vélasquez inspired Manet to paint the fifer in this style…

1. Portrait d’ Olivier Bro, 1818-1819
62 x 51 cm
Harvard Art Museum

2. detail with tuquoise underpaint

3. eyeball and eyelid detail

4. Édouard Manet
Le fifre , 1866
160,5 x 97 cm
Musée d’Orsay

BLOG 5 July 2024

 fur coat

About a decade ago I bought a porcelain figurine advertised online as Napoléon. This Napoléon figurine is dressed in a huge fur coat, wears a tricorne, a white wig with a plaited queue tied with a black ribbon, white breeches, and black shoes with golden clasps.

Napoléon?!

I contacted the Herend factory, who produced this figurine in 1970’s, to find out who this figurine actually represented, they wrote it was a shepherd, full stop.

A shepherd!?

Shepherds wearing silk socs and gold clasped shoes when herding sheep…and plaited queues tied with black ribbons are worn by military men only, not by shepherds, and certainly not by Napoléon. Neither would he have worn a tricorne. He was famous for wearing a bicorne.

My artworks are driven by these stories, the lies, the alternative facts [lies], the lack of facts and bizarre facts.

Géricault made several sketches of his friend Montfort wearing a Persian costume. The coat Montfort wears is as huge as the one my figurine wears. He is not a Persian man, he impersonates a Persian man, just as my figurine is neither Napoléon nor a shepherd. But it is a fact that Romanian shepherds wore [and some still wear] these coat-cloaks.

These coats worn cloak-style are fascinating. Why would you go through the trouble of sewing sleeves on a coat that you’re going to wear as a cloak? And why would you need sleeves twice as long as your arms, which makes them impossibly impractical? Now the Persian sleeves have slits in them, so you can actually put your arms ‘through’ these sleeves. These types of sleeves will have been very practical to warm your arms, and they’re absolutely stunning as 'formal dress', but for a shepherd I can’t see how these sleeves could work.
These coats worn cloak-style were also popular amongst military. The pelisse as worn by the ‘chasseurs’ is always worn over one shoulder, not using the sleeves.

...Completely tangled up in a web of weird lies and equally weird facts....

1. Théodore Géricault
   Montfort en costume Persan
   Watercolour 30x36 cm
2.  detail Musée privé (à emporter), Salle pied de Roi
   various materials
   65 x 33 x 51 cm
   2023
3. Roman shepherd coat
4. Théodore Géricault's chasseur wearing his pélisse over one shoulder.

BLOG 24 December 2024

 Docteur Lebas

So many of Géricault's works are in private collections that I know most of his work only from books. And I have studied them so much that I often no longer know whether I have seen them 'live' somewhere or whether I only think I have seen them.

But I know with great certainty that I have looked deeply into the eyes of Docteur Victor Lebas.

It was in Frankfurt, 2013 in the Géricault exhibition 'images of life and death'.
Docteur Lebas had such a friendly face, that it felt like he was about to say something in a warm and calm voice. I could almost sense his presence.

How does Géricault achieve this??
So alive, so human, almost in motion... with only paint, water, brush, and paper.

It strikes me that in art documentaries it's becoming a trend to animate paintings..

It's all about potential energy, as my physics teacher explained very vividly years ago… He took the blackboard brush in his hand, walked to the back of the classroom, held it up and said: 'this is potential energy' and then, completely unexpectedly (to all of us, but carefully planned by him), and with great force, he threw the blackboard brush across the classroom and said: 'and this is 'kinetic' energy'!

I don't want to experience the kinetic energy of the portrait of Docteur Lebas.
It would destroy the illusion, or worse, it would make me see that Docteur Lebas is unmistakably dead and long gone.

But thanks to this mesmerising watercolour, his potential energy is eternal.

1,2,3 Théodore Géricault, Portrait de Docteur Victor Lebas, watercolour, 24.5 x 18.5 cm, Musée municipal des beaux-arts Saint-Lô

4. Géricault exhibition ‘images of life and death’, 2014, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

BLOG 3 January 2025

Portrait d'un Africain

Seeing an ‘unknown’ Géricault always comes as a shock to me.

I first saw this portrait in Frankfurt in 2013. I didn’t know it, never read anything about it, never even saw an image of it. But there it was: ‘portrait d’Africain en buste’.

Géricault painted many intriguing portraits, this could be one of them, but everything about this portrait puzzles me.

Géricault’s is known for his unconventional technique of painting the background over the foreground. In this portrait the background has been painted over both ears, but I find it difficult to believe that it was Géricault who held the brush that made these strokes.
The white in this background feels like it’s painted to cover something.

Géricault however retraces the contours of a face with his brush, defining the silhouette, and perfecting the composition. These brushstrokes, are smooth, like he’s caressing the skin of the sitter, knowing that this is his final ‘touch’… and he's letting go of the painting.

The background strokes in this portrait however look uncontrolled and hasty. The African’s left ear even looks hurt by the brushstroke, the white collar is blunt, and his right shoulder, well I don’t know.

Yes, it’s difficult to define what makes 'a true Géricault'. He used many different techniques, but there’s one criterion that I think applies to all his works: ‘respect’. He treats every subject he paints with respect. I see respect in the face of this African man, but I find it hard to believe that Géricault would ‘cut’ his ear like this, it feels disrespectful.

Maybe the painting was damaged, and someone ‘restored’ the background? Who knows?

In 2021 this portrait was acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The provenance gives no real clues about the life of this painting.
I so hope it will be researched with x-ray or infrared to reveal its hidden history….and prove me wrong....or right.

Théodore Géricault
Portrait d’Africain en buste
1819
54.7 x 45.5 cm
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

BLOG 17 January 2025

Floating Women

Géricault drew and painted many seated soldiers, on their horses or leaning against a rock.
They always sit firmly, but the seated women he painted always seem to slightly float… These women defy gravity. In his pencil sketches though, the women are visibly sitting; the folds form angularly where their buttocks and thighs touch the seat of the chair. So the drawn women are sitting, the painted women are floating.

Fascinated by this floating phenomenon I have come up with a theory (based on my personal experience with painting and drawing).
The sensation of pencil on paper is very different from brush on canvas.
Drawing contour lines of a dress with a pencil or painting a pleated dress with a brush is hugely different, in feel, sound, intention and sensation.
Géricault loved women and painterly caressed the body shapes of these women with his brush and delicately folded the precious fabrics around their bodies. Might this explain his ‘floating women’?


FACT CHECK
(because I wasn’t sure what pencils were used in Géricault’s days and I still appreciate facts):
‘The modern wood cased pencil was invented and patented in 1795 by Nicolas-Jacques Conté, a scientist serving in the army of Napoléon Bonaparte. A mix of clay and graphite was baked and pressed the material between two half-cylinders of wood’.
Et voilà, Géricault drew with a modern pencil!

1. Géricault’s ‘flaoting women' details
All in private collections

2. Portrait de Laure Bro (née de Comères)
1818-1820
45x55 cm

3. Zoë et Adam Elmore à cheval
1821
27,4 x 21.9 cm

4. Portrait de Zoë Elmore
1821
65.5 x 55 cm

5. Madame Bro assise
1818-1820
29.6 x 22.6

6. This sketch is always referred to as a study for the painting of Laure Bro, but this woman is not wearing a dress...she's covered in a sheet, lightly pressed against her chest with her right hand….I’d say she’s more likely one of his lady friends
1818-1820
20.2 x 28 cm