Theodore Gericault

This new monograph explores the life and works of Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), whose compelling career and legacy continue to captivate audiences, artists, and critics alike. In her comprehensive survey, Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer pays tribute to established Gericault scholarship while reassessing the career of an artist too easily miscast as the archetypal 'tortured soul' of art-historical Romantic mythology. She examines Gericault's career in the context of France under the Restauration, during which Louis XVIII s controversial rule resulted in vigorous popular debate over civic structures, the political process, and even aesthetic categories. Gericault immersed himself in these polemics, taking an intense interest in the fait divers, or 'daily happenings', of his time. The author explores his interest in medical and psychiatric science (as exemplified by a series of portraits of mental patients), his empathy for the poor and dispossessed (the subject of numerous lithographs), and the entrepreneurial spirit that led him to exhibit his epic canvas, the Raft of the Medusa, in London as a commercial venture. Gericault is presented as an artist committed to capturing contemporary life with creative integrity and dramatic verve.