At twenty-one, Théodore Géricault exhibited at the Salon, the official exhibition where reputations were made. He then spent two years painting his Raft of the Medusa: a frigate lost, a hundred and fifty men left adrift, a political news story given the scale of grand history painting. The Salon gave him a medal and a cold reception; the success and the money he found in London. Dead at thirty-two, he lies under a bronze effigy, stretched out with the palette still in his hand.
The story
In 1812 the Officier de chasseurs de la garde impériale brought a painter of twenty-one into the Salon. Four years later he left for Italy, watched the Roman carnival and began his studies for the Course des chevaux libres.
From 1818 to 1819 he painted the Radeau de la Méduse. A political news story — a frigate wrecked, a hundred and fifty men abandoned — carried to the scale of grand history painting: that is a provocation. The Salon gave him a medal and received him with hostility; the commission for a painting of the Sacred Heart passed from him to the young Delacroix.
For the accuracy of his anatomies he stored pieces of corpses in his studio, human and animal alike. In April 1820 he shipped the Radeau across the Channel and showed it in London and then in Dublin: it was there, and not in France, that he found his success and his money.
In 1822 two bad falls from horseback left him bedridden. In one of them a waistcoat knot drove deep into his back; the wound would never heal. He moved in with his friend Dedreux-Dorcy and died on 26 January 1824, at thirty-two.
His major works entered the Louvre. And it was Delacroix who launched the public subscription for his tomb — the painter who had been handed the Sacred Heart commission taken from Géricault.
The grave
Antoine Etex laid the painter down in bronze, his palette in his hand. This bronze replaced an earlier monument in white marble, dated 1840, now in the museum at Rouen. Three bronze bas-reliefs by the same sculptor turn the tomb into a digest of the work: The Raft of the Medusa on the front, The Charging Chasseur and The Wounded Cuirassier on the sides. Delacroix launched the public subscription that paid for the monument; the City of Paris maintains the plot at its own expense. The stone bears only “1791 + 1824, GERICAULT”.
On site, do not miss
Walk all the way round: the three bronzes are not on the same side, and two of them hide from you if you stay at the front. Then come back to the effigy's hand — it still holds the palette.
Visitors' questions
What can be seen on Géricault's grave?
A bronze recumbent effigy of the painter, palette in hand, and three bas-reliefs that reproduce his paintings — first among them, The Raft of the Medusa.
Honoré DaumierWhere is this grave?
In Division 12, in the older part of the cemetery. Look for a big bronze figure lying on the tomb.
David d'AngersWhat did Géricault die of?
From a fall from a horse: the wound in his back never healed. He died in January 1824, after a long decline, at thirty-two.
Dominique Vivant DenonWhy did The Raft of the Medusa cause a scandal?
Because in it Géricault painted a political news story — the wreck of a frigate, a hundred and fifty men abandoned on a raft — at the scale reserved for great scenes of history. Exhibited in 1819, the painting was given a medal and loathed.
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