Although he had won a gold medal with his first submission to the Salon in 1812, Théodore Géricault’s huge depiction of the survivors of the shipwreck of the Medusa was new ground for him, and the product of a year’s research and intensive painting.

The end result is a vast canvas, its figures shown life-sized, that has had huge impact on everyone who has seen it since 1819. It appears completely authentic, and given the work that Géricault put into making it so, that’s not surprising. But most gain the impression that the raft was almost square in form, as a result of the tight cropping applied, and that even with those few survivors on board, it was overcrowded. This is because Géricault chose to pack all his figures into one small section of the raft.

This huge canvas was hung at the Salon in Paris in 1819, originally under the title of Shipwreck Scene (Scène de Naufrage). Those who saw it there would have had no difficulty in recognising its reference to the Medusa incident. The critics were, as expected, divided, some writing complaints about its frank depiction of corpses and the feelings of revulsion they evoked. Among the public, the painting was the most discussed of the year, and immediately shot to stardom.

The painting was awarded a gold medal, but surprisingly wasn’t purchased for the nation. At the end of the Salon, it was removed from its stretchers, rolled up, and put into storage. Géricault retreated to the countryside to recover.

The following year, he took it to London, where it went on display in a private gallery in Piccadilly, and was seen by about forty thousand viewers during the latter half of the year. There it was better positioned than it had been at the Salon, and more generally acclaimed by critics and public alike. In 1821, it moved on to Dublin, where it competed less successfully against the spectacle of a moving panorama on the same tragedy.

The Raft of the Medusa remained unsold until after Géricault’s untimely death in 1824. A smaller copy was made in the late 1820s and exhibited to crowds in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC.

Critics also raised concerns about the accuracy of Géricault’s depiction of the raft and its occupants.

The published drawing of the plan of the raft reveals how the painting shows only about a quarter of the total area of the raft as it actually was: the lowest rectangular section drawn in Savigny and Corréard’s book.

Another problem was the physical state of the bodies, alive and dead, which hardly reflects thirteen days of almost complete starvation and profound dehydration. Instead, Géricault opted for a well-muscled appearance more typical of life classes or classical sculpture. He may have done that in order to increase the heroic impression, instead of making the survivors look weak and pathetic.

Among the dozens of sketches and studies he made in preparation for his masterwork, this Portrait Study of Joseph from 1818-19 stands out in its own right.

Although there’s no record of Géricault having visited Cadiz, around 1819 he is thought to have painted this Scene from the Epidemic of Yellow Fever in Cadiz. At that time, this virus disease swept through parts of Europe periodically, causing large numbers of deaths. It had a strong association with the slave trade, is carried by species of mosquito, and was greatly feared.

In his ceaseless exploration of different images, between about 1817-20 he even turned briefly to the erotic, in this oil sketch of Three Lovers.

At the end of 1820, Géricault became acutely ill, probably as a result of the complications of tuberculosis.

References

Athanassoglou-Kallmyer N (2010) Théodore Géricault, Phaidon Press. ISBN 978 0 7148 4400 8.
Eitner L (1972) Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, Phaidon Press.