Théodore Géricault

Possibly, Laperlier;
His deceased sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, February 17-21, 1879, lot 152;
Baron Arthur Nedjma Chassériau (1850-1934), first cousin of the painter Théodore Chasséeriau;
Colonel Frédéric Nouvion, nephew of Baron Chassériau;
Hans Eduard Bühler (1893-1967), Winterthur, by 1953;
His sale, London, Christie's, November 15, 1985, lot 20;
There purchased by the present collector.

Winterthur, Kunstmuseum, Théodore Géricault 1791-1824, August 30-November 8, 1953, no. 46;
Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen, June 29-September 29, 1963, no. 49;
New York, Salander O-Reilly Galleries, Théodore Géricault, An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Prints and Sculpture, 1987, no. 10.

P. Dubaut and P. Nathan, Sammlung Hans E. Bühler, Géricault 1791-1824, Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Winterthur 1956, cat. no. 17, reproduced (as by Géricault);
P. Grunchec, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Géricault, Paris 1978, pp. 130-31, cat. no. A10, reproduced (as attributed to Géricault);
G. Bazin, Théodore Géricault, étude critique, documents et catalogue raisonné, Paris 1989, vol. III, pp. 16, 111, no. 614, reproduced (as by Géricault);
P. Grunchec, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Géricault, 1991 (revised edition of 1978), p. 131, cat. no. A.10, reproduced (as attributed to Géricault);
L. Eitner, "Book Reviews. Thédore Géricault. Etude critique documents, et catalouge raisonné, by Germain Bazin, Vols. I, II, III," The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXIII, no. 1057, April 1991, p. 256 (with some doubt on the authenticity).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is in wonderful condition. The paint layer is clean and lightly varnished. The canvas has a very old lining which still nicely stabilizes the paint layer. There are a few tiny dots of retouch visible above the back of the white horse and another small restoration in front of the head of the brown horse. Other than this, any thinness to the paint layer appears to be original. The painting is clean, unabraded and in lovely condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This painting will be included in the Catalogue raisonné des tableaux de Théodore Géricault, currently in preparation by M. Bruno Chenique to whom we are grateful for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.  A letter with full cataloguing by M. Chenique accompanies this lot. 

Géricault's passion for horses paralleled his prodigious talent as an artist.  Historically remembered for his grand-scale history paintings, Géircault also devoted a large amount of his career to studying and capturing the form and manner of the horse.  In 1810, Géricault left the studio of Carle Vernet for that of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833), renowned for his scholarly reputation and academic teaching. While Géricault learned a great deal from Guérin, he often found himself impatient with his master's rigid curriculum; circa 1811, he interrupted his studies to travel outside the studio for new sources of inspiration.  On a visit to the Barracks of Courbevoie, Géricault observed dispatch riders' horses at rest and was compelled to paint their "rumps in a row".¹ Returning to Paris, Géricault hastened to show his completed work to his teacher, as he believed it would establish his reputation in the studio and suggest his future potential. Géricault would go on to complete hundreds of drawings and a good number of canvases capturing his fascination with equine anatomy and the expressiveness of the horse at rest, at work, or in battle, linking the animal's impressive physicality with a more subtle psychology. The present equine composition holds many of the elements distinct to Géricault oeuvre: its compact composition; the use of brown monochrome in various shades to create the stable's space; the placement of the two main horses in contrasting tones of warm blocks of brown versus the cool spectrum of grays; and the interplay of large blocks of paint to build the muscular volumes of the horse in the foreground versus the more quickly applied strokes of the gray, and the brief black lines which suggest the heads of the three horses in the dark recesses of the stable.  Overall, the present work demonstrates Géricault's careful and objective observations of the stable with an exuberant element of the artist's own excitement of the subject.

As with many of Géricault's paintings, scholars have debated the present work's attribution.  Philippe Grunchec listed the work as attributed to the artist in his 1978 catalogue raisonné. When the work appeared at auction in 1985 as part of the Hans E. Bühler collection, Lorenz Eitner recognized it as an authentic work while Grunchec remained uncertain stating: the lack of modeling strength in the treatment of one of the horses, which one should maybe blame to the old retouching, inclines me to be cautious."  In 1989, Germain Bazin accepted the painting dating it to circa 1810-12, noting that several pentiments (in the horse's legs) were positive signs of authenticity: "rather than a doubtful attribution as Philippe Grunchec thought, I think it is a tentative painting of a youthful artist."  In 1991, Gruchec revisited his first opinion: "a recent cleaning, after the Bühler sale, gave back strength to this painting which inclines me to temper our previous severity toward this work."  Yet in the same year Eitner contradicted his earlier favorable opinion of 1985.  Most recently, Bruno Chenique has completed a careful exam of the work's surface (which as Grunchec indicates had been cleaned) with the use of Lumière Technology (a technique of high resolution multi-spectral scanning) which has allowed an exceptional and unprecedented view of the painting, allowing a final, reattribution to the artist.

1.  Anonyme, Géricault (Jean-Louis-Théodore-André), Biographie universelle et portative des contemporains, t. II, Vieilh de Boisjoslin, 1830, [publié en tiré à part le 2 août 1828], p. 1862.