Art Collage JANG: Interesting Art Stories: 45. The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault, ACJ Art Academy

How are you?

Currently, I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the title “Interesting Art Stories”.

The 45th story is “The Raft of the Medusa” by Théodore Géricault.

Originally titled “Shipwreck Scene”, “The Raft of the Medusa” is an oil painting by French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault in 1818-19 and became an icon of French Romanticism.

Théodore Géricault

Painted in a large size of 491 by 716 cm, it depicts a moment after the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on 2 July 1816.

Sailing Méduse

In this incident, about 147 people were adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft, all but 15 of them died before rescue, and those who survived ate human flesh, enduring starvation and dehydration.

Cannibalism on the Raft of the Medusa

Fascinated by this event, which aroused great global interest, Géricault conducted extensive research and drew many preliminary sketches before starting the final painting.

A study for The Raft of the Medusa

A preparatory oil sketch of The Raft of the Medusa

He interviewed two of the survivors of this incident, and even visited hospitals and morgues to observe the color and texture of the flesh of the dying and the dead. The painting became highly controversial when first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1819, and was praised and criticized in equal measure, but Géricault established his international reputation with this painting.

The painting, which attracted wide attention in its first exhibition, was then exhibited in London, and the Louvre acquired it shortly after Géricault's death.

Louvre Museum

It was a landmark in the emerging Romantic movement in French painting and laid the foundations of an aesthetic revolution against the Neoclassical style that prevailed at the time.

Looking at the artists influenced by this painting, although Gustave Courbet can be described as an anti-Romantic painter, his major works, such as "A Burial at Ornans" and "The Painter's Studio,” seem to have been influenced by the painting.

A Burial at Ornans, Gustave Courbet

The Painter's Studio, Gustave Courbet

Irish painter Francis Danby was inspired by this painting when he painted "Sunset at Sea after a Storm" in 1824, and he wrote in 1829 that "The Raft of the Medusa was the finest and grandest historical picture I have ever seen”.

Sunset at Sea after a Storm, Francis Danby

English painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, like many English artists, seems to have seen the painting when it was exhibited in London in 1820. His “A Disaster at Sea” chronicled a similar incident in England, with a swamped vessel and dying figures placed in the foreground.

A Disaster at Sea, J. M. W. Turner

“The Gulf Stream” by American artist Winslow Homer replicated the composition of this painting by depicting a damaged vessel surrounded by sharks and threatened by a waterspout. Like Géricault, Homer makes a black man the pivotal figure in his painting, although he is the only one on board the ship.