Romantic pioneer Géricault on show in Ghent
The biggest exhibition of work by Romantic master Théodore Géricault outside France in more than half a century is at Ghent’s Museum of Fine Arts
Images of life and death
The French painter Géricault, one of the pioneers of Romanticism in the visual arts, found his subjects where most of his contemporaries didn’t bother to look: in mental institutions.
He created a series of portraits of so-called monomaniacs: probably 10 paintings, though only five survived. One of them belongs to the museum in Ghent, while two more have made the trip for this exhibition.
Seeing them, you immediately understand why the museum called the exhibition Fragments of Compassion. Géricault doesn’t condemn the child kidnapper, the kleptomaniac or the “woman with obsessive envy” (pictured), as early 19th-century society would have condemned them, but instead bathes them in mercy.
Géricault’s most famous work is “The Raft of the Medusa”, a painting of almost 4 x 7 metres, which hangs in Paris’ Louvre. It depicts a group of people who, on a raft, survived the wreckage of the French naval frigate Méduse that ran aground off the coast of West Africa. It’s painted as a historical piece, but, contrary to what was normal in that genre of painting, it doesn’t show famous historical or mythological figures.
At first it even bore a neutral title (“Scene of a Shipwreck”), but since the wreck of the Méduse had caused a great scandal in France, every visitor to the 1819 Salon in Paris knew what it was about. The captain and certain officers had used lifeboats, while dropping nearly 150 passengers and crewmembers on to a barely seaworthy raft. By the time they were rescued, two weeks later, only 15 were still alive.
Though the painting drew extremely divided reactions, Géricault’s name was made. At his untimely death five years later, he was the author of a small but impressive oeuvre and is now considered one of the greatest painters of the period.
Humans and horses
“The Raft of the Medusa” isn’t allowed to leave the Louvre, but the curators of the exhibition found an excellent copy, painted around 1860 by Pierre-Désiré Guillemet and Étienne-Antoine-Eugène Ronjat. It was lying bundled up in a cellar of the Musée de Picardie in Amiens, France and is the opening piece of the exhibition, filling the museum’s famous central semi-rotunda.
Géricault went to great lengths to paint “The Raft of the Medusa”, rebuilding the raft in his studio and painting both portraits of survivors as well as smaller-scale works, both oil paintings and drawings, in which he searched for the best balanced composition. Those included the above-mentioned still lifes of body parts and the impressive “Study of a Nude”. This is a naked male body, seen from the back, in which the influence of Rubens, one of the old masters Géricault used to copy in his youth, is clearly visible; though the canvas also shows Géricault’s idiosyncrasies.
All those studies fill one of the rooms of this thematic exhibition. His monomaniacs fill another, as do his horses. Géricault was an extremely talented painter of these animals. There are works, for instance, in which he focused on certain parts of the horse, like the head or a leg, drawing or painting them as anatomically correctly as possible.
But due to Géricault’s hand, they’re much more than just anatomical reproductions. All those studies culminate in a mesmerising “Head of a White Horse”, painted with a very fine touch, more resembling – in lighting and composition – a human portrait than an animal painting.
Géricault died when he was 32, officially because he fell off a horse, though historians speculate his death might have been caused by tuberculosis or venereal disease. In a room with beautiful portraits (including the amazing “Young Boy”) by Géricault, there are also some works of him, created by other artists.
In his oil painting of Géricault, Horace Vernet seems to emulate his colleague’s style. But the most striking works in that room are of the scrawny, hollow-eyed dying painter and of his corpse on its deathbed. They’re flanked by his death mask.
When this exhibition was shown in Frankfurt last autumn, it was called Images of Life and Death. That seems as valid a title as Fragments of Compassion.
From Medusa to Lampedusa
Before entering the Géricault exhibition at Ghent’s Museum of Fine Arts, you’re welcomed by “Lade”, a new installation by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, a Philippine artist duo based in Australia. It consists of seven rafts made from wooden pallets and cardboard, loaded with small boats, suitcases, boxes and other items related to travelling. They created the work together with volunteers and children from Ghent.
“Lade” explores the theme of migration and is partially inspired by the Lampedusa ship wreck last year that took the lives of more than 350 African migrants, looking for a better life in Europe. As with Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”, it’s a protest against those who use their power against the underprivileged. From Medusa to Lampedusa: Sadly, it’s a small step for mankind.
Until 25 May
Museum of Fine Arts
Fernand Scribedreef 1, Ghent
www.mskgent.be
Photo © bpk, Berlin | Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
