Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault

René Charles Eugene Longa (1878-c.1960), Paris;

Gaston Delestre (1913-1969), Paris,

thence by descent until,

sale, Paris, Artcurial, Collection Gaston Delestre, 22 March 2017, lot 114,

where acquired

Paris, Galerie Gobin, Dessins, aquarelles et gouaches de Géricault, 1935, no. 46;

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Géricault peintre et dessinateur, 1937, no. 132;

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Cent-cinquante ans de dessins, 1952-53, no. 74;

Paris, Galerie Aubry, Géricault dans les collections privées françaises, 1964, no. 69 bis

L. Eitner, "Dessins de Géricault d'après Rubens : la genèse du Radeau de la Méduse", in La Revue de l'Art, 1971, no. 14, p. 54-5, fig. 14;

L. Eitner, Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, London 1972, p. 163, no. 77, fig. 76;

G. Bazin, Théodore Géricault; Étude critique, documents, et catalogue raisonné, Paris 1992, vol. V, p. 218, no. 1668, reproduced (verso) and vol. VI, p. 138, no. 2019, reproduced (recto)

P. Forster and R. Krämer, Delacroix - Courbet - Ribot, Positionen französischer Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts, Petersberg 2017, p. 18, fig. 1

The recto of this fine double-sided sheet is a study for the figure lying on his back, slipping into the water, in the foreground of Géricault's masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa, executed in 1818-19 and now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.  As noted by Bazin (loc. cit.) the figure depicted in our drawing was added by Géricault to the final composition at the last minute. This drawing, which contains a number of exploratory, subsidiary studies for the same figure, encapsulates, alongside two further sheets at Besançon¹, the artist's efforts to find a suitably dramatic way to draw the viewer's eye into the pyramid-shaped composition. Something that Géricault so very evidently succeeded in achieving.

On the verso is a drawing that could not be further removed from the drama and agony of the recto. Here Géricault's depicts a postilion, mounted on a stationary horse and leaning towards a second horse. Though the second horse and much of the postilion himself are quite lightly drawn, the horse in the centre of the drawing is rendered in beautiful detail.

^1.Bazin, op. cit. pp. 138-9, nos. 2018 and 2020, both reproduced