Théodore Géricault valuation
The Raft of the Medusa, horses and portraits of the mentally ill, by the painter who launched French Romanticism.
Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) was born in Rouen and trained in Paris with Carle Vernet, a painter of horses, and Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.
What a work by Théodore Géricault is worth
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Bio
Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) was born in Rouen and trained in Paris with Carle Vernet, a painter of horses, and Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. His Charging Chasseur won a gold medal at the Salon of 1812. After a stay in Rome he painted The Raft of the Medusa, the survivors of a French naval frigate wrecked off West Africa in 1816, interviewing survivors as he planned it; shown at the Salon of 1819, a contemporary scandal painted at the scale of history painting, it is now in the Louvre. He took it to London in 1820, where it was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, and while in England he made lithographs of English life and painted The Derby at Epsom. In about 1822 he painted a series of portraits of the mentally ill, of which five survive.
Géricault's paintings are few and mostly in French museums, and his drawings, oil sketches and lithographs are what usually come to market. He was much copied, especially his horses and his studies for the Raft, and many oil sketches given to him in the past are now attributed to followers, so the catalogue of his work by Germain Bazin and the opinion of specialists carry great weight. His lithographs, including the set Various Subjects Drawn from Life and on Stone published in London in 1821, are valued according to the impression and the paper.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
