Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Gericault

Baron de Laage
Dr. Loeper
Alfred-Emmanuel-Louis Beurdeley, Paris,
possibly his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 23-24 May 1921 (according to an inscription on the mounting sheet)
with Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, by 1937
Private Collection
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 23 May 1990, lot 131;
sale, New York, Sotheby's, 28 January 2015, lot 167

Paris, Bernheim-Jeune, Géricault, peintre et dessinateur, 1937, no. 80

G. Bazin, Théodore Géricault: étude critique, documents et catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Paris 1987, p. 407, no. 250, reproduced, also cited p. 283;
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Géricault, 1991-1992, p. 351, under no. 80;
Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and elsewhere, Géricault: Dessins & estampes des collections de l'École des Beaux-Arts, 1997-1998, p. 170, under no. D.57, note 1

Géricault based the composition for the present work on a print produced by Jean Mathieu (1749-1815) after an antique engraved cameo in the Grand Ducal collections in Florence.  Mathieu’s print would have been known to the artist thanks to its inclusion in the compendium by J.-B. Wicar and A. Mongez, Tableaux, statues, bas-reliefs et camées de la Galerie de Florence et du Palais Pitti, dessinés par Wicar, peintre, et gravés sous la direction de C.L. Masquelier, Paris 1789, vol. I, plate 4.  Two further drawings by Géricault portraying Cupid and Apollo and Cupid with his hands bound, both now in the collection of the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, are also known to relate to plates from this publication.¹

1. Bazin, op. cit., p. 403, no. 239 and p. 407, no. 249