ROMANTICISM ART

THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA

   

Artist Name: Theodore Géricault

Art work:  The Raft of the Medusa 

Location :  louvre, Paris

Theodore Géricault created one of the most iconic masterpieces of French Romanticism, the Raft of the Medusa (1818-19). Depicted on a monumental scale, Géricault portrayed in horrifying explicitness scenes of a shipwreck based on a contemporary event in which the captain had deserted his crew and passengers, leaving them to die. The painting’s allusions to governmental negligence and corruption ignited great controversy and brought Géricault widespread attention. Although he died young, his candid representations and bold style influenced many of his contemporaries, including Eugène Delacroix, who served as one of the models for the Raft of the Medusa.  French, 1791-1824, Rouen, France, based in Paris, France.

"Although baroque tactics abound, Géricault's use of shock tactics, stunning the viewer's sensibilities, amounted to something new. A new tone and intention that distinguished the "high" phase of romanticism. In this phase, an instinct for the sublime and the terrible, qualities celebrated in the esthetic theory and art of the eighteenth century for example, (Fuselli's Nightmare), found sharpest expression in a method of reportorial accuracy far more stringent than that found in certain works by David.

The Raft of the Medusa Analysis

 Composition

• The action is arranged in two distinct pyramidal shapes. The diagonal lines lead the eye to two key peaks: the wave that may or may not engulf the survivors on the raft, and the flag in the top right corner that is raised in a last gesture of hope to the ship that may or may not rescue them.

Color palette:

• Géricault utilized a somber, dramatic color palette that was characteristic of Romantic painters. As the focus of the painting is the mass of corpses, flesh tones are present in abundance.

 Lighting and tone:

• The tone of the painting is as dark as the subject matter. Géricault draws from the Baroque with his lighting scheme, heavy on chiaroscuro and tenebrism, the stark contrast between light and dark. the draw likes The light of the sky contrasts sharply with the darkness of the sea and the overall tone of impending doom.

Figure studies:

• For the amazingly life-like and eerie quality to the bodies, Géricault worked figure by figure, completing the sketching and painting of each body before moving on to the next one. He had closely studied cadavers in the local morgue, bringing home severed limbs and heads.

Based the painting show  directly from these live models instead of from preparatory sketches.

References

Alhadeff, Albert. The Raft of the Medusa: Gericault, Art, and Race. Prestel, 2002

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/theodore-gericault-the-raft-of-the-medusa. 

Berger, Klaus & Gaericault, Thaeodore. Gericault: Drawings & Watercolors. New York: H. Bittner and Company, 1946.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa