John Singleton Copley
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The classical depiction of the figures and structure of the composition stand in contrast to the turbulence of the subject, and creates an important bridge between the styles of neo-classicism and romanticism. The painting fuses many influences: the Last Judgment of Michelangelo, the monumental approach to contemporary events by Antoine-Jean Gros, figure groupings by Henry Fuseli, and possibly the painting Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley.
The painting ignited political controversy when first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819; it then traveled to England in 1820, where it received much praise. While in London Géricault witnessed urban poverty, made drawings of his impressions, and published lithographs based on these observations which were free of sentimentality.
Late work
After his return to France, Géricault was inspired to paint a series of ten portraits of the insane, the patients of a friend, doctor E. J. Georget, a pioneer in psychiatric medicine, with each subject exhibiting a different affliction. The five remaining portraits from the series represent his last triumph. The paintings are noteworthy for their bravura style, expressive realism, and for their documenting of the psychological discomfort of individuals, made all the more poignant by the history of insanity in Géricault's family, as well as the artist's own fragile mental health. His observations of the human subject were not confined to the living, for some remarkable still-lifes, painted studies of severed heads and limbs, have also been ascribed to the artist.
Géricault's last efforts were directed toward preliminary studies for several epic compositions, including the Opening of the Doors of the Spanish Inquisition and the African Slave Trade. The preparatory drawings suggest works of great ambition, but Géricault's waning health intervened. Weakened by riding accidents and chronic tubercular infection, he died in Paris in 1824 after a long period of suffering. His bronze figure reclines, brush in hand, on his tomb at Père Lachaise, above a low-relief panel of the Raft of the Medusa.
See also
Famous paintings
