![]() ![]() The captain and crew aboard the other boats intended to tow the raft, but after only a few miles the raft was turned loose. ![]() On July 5, the frightened passengers and crew started an attempt to travel the 60 miles (97 km) to the African coast in the frigate’s six boats, but as with the Titanic, there was not enough room in the lifeboats for everyone on board.Īt least 146 men and one woman were piled onto a hastily built raft, which partially submerged once it was loaded. It ran aground on a sandbank off the West African coast, near today’s Mauritania, after drifting 100 miles (161 km) off-court because of poor navigation. In June 1816, the French frigate Méduse departed from Rochefort, bound for the Senegalese port of Saint-Louis, with Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys as captain, despite having scarcely sailed in 20 years. Eugène Delacroix, The Massacre at Chios, 1824, Louvre, Paris, France. Turner, Gustave Courbet, and Édouard Manet. The painting’s influence can be seen in the works of Eugène Delacroix, J. The Louvre acquired it soon after the artist’s death at the age of 32. Géricault’s work attracted wide attention from its first showing and was then exhibited in London. The dramatic presentation and subject represent a break from the calm and order of the prevailing Neoclassical school. It established his international reputation and is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the Romantic movement in French painting. As he had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 Paris Salon, attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. The event fascinated him, and before he began work on the final painting, he interviewed two of the survivors and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. Géricault chose to depict this event to launch his career with a large-scale uncommissioned work on a subject that had already generated great public interest. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain. On July 5, 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism. It depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today’s Mauritania on 2 July 1816. ![]() It is 16 ft x 21.5 ft (491 cm × 716 cm), the figures are larger than life-size, and it dominates the room in the Louvre where it is housed. It made so tremendous an impression on me that when I came out of the studio I started running like a madman and did not stop till I reached my own room. Géricault allowed me to see his Raft of Medusa while he was still working on it. In fact, Delacroix himself modeled for The Raft as the foreground figure lying face down with his arm stretched toward the viewer. Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819, Louvre, Paris, France. It is a direct precursor of Delacroix’s Massacre at Chios and Liberty Leading the People. Théodore Géricault completed The Raft of the Medusa when he was 27, and the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. ![]()
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