Théodore Géricault

Claude Binant (1793? - 1856)
Private Collection, France

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work has been quite recently cleaned and varnished. The canvas has been reinforced around the tacking edges, but the stretcher is old and the canvas itself is unlined. The paint layer is stable and in very good condition. There is a small retouch between the horses, one in the tail of the horse on the right and a couple of other small spots of retouching, but this work is essentially in very fresh and original condition. It should be hung in its current state.
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Géricault’s passion for horses matched his prodigious talent as an artist.  Remembered for his grand-scale history paintings, the artist also devoted a large amount of his career to studying and capturing the equine form and manner. From his childhood spent sketching in a local blacksmith’s shop, Géricault was fascinated with the animals, observing them first hand at Paris’ Cirque Olympique de Franconi or as they trotted out of aristocrats’ homes, and later painting the muscular, proud beasts during early training in the studio of Carle Vernet followed by study under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (Philippe Grunchec, Géricault’s Horses, Drawings and Watercolors, London, 1985, pp. 5-6). The present work, an expressive study of two dappled greys ridden by shadowy, seemingly unfinished figures, is all the more remarkable as it dates from this early period and is among the first studies of horses by the artist. 

Until today, Chevaux gris pommelé has been unrecorded, though it closely resembles an example documented in the first Géricault catalogue raisonné by Charles Clément (no. 27, 1867 and no. 28, 1868) as well as the modern volumes of Philippe Grunchec (no. 10, 1978) and Germain Bazin  (no. 588, 1989).  The documented version was first auctioned in Paul van Cuyck’s sale of February 1866, later entering the Bischoffsheim-Naoilles collection, and is considered by Clément and Grunchec to date from 1811-1812, the period in which Géricault was with Guérin, or 1813-1814, while Bazin dates it earlier, circa 1808. Most recently, Bruno Chenique has suggested that the present work dates both from 1814 and before the Noailles picture, pointing toward the artist’s quickly applied, sketch-like application of paint, which gives the work a slightly less finished appearance.  Therefore the present work is not a replica of the Noailles picture but its own distinct expression. Chenique further explains that the Binant stamp on the work’s reverse is a clue to provenance rather than an otherwise misleading suggestion as to its placement within the artist’s oeuvre.  The canvas maker and art supplier Charles Binant opened his shop in 1823-24, making it impossible for him to have supplied the canvas to the artist. Instead, he purchased the painting itself from Géricault, just as he had two other paintings executed in 1814 and 1817. 

The recent discovery of this “Binant Géricault” and the subtle, yet significant differences between it and the “Noailles Géricault” are important keys in understanding the artist’s creative process, the way in which he combined and discarded visual elements -- all the more remarkable in their minute shifts.  Such careful observation, as demonstrated in this early work, would provide the foundation for Géricault’s brilliant, mature talent, often expressed through the beauty of the horse.