1819
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Sheet of Sketches (recto) is a 1819 by Théodore Géricault, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This is a single sheet of quick pencil sketches. You see men wrestling with horses and a few faint outlines of women showing through from the back. Géricault drew these in 1819 while sitting by a spring near Fontainebleau forest. The men look like the ones he studied in Italy—peasants holding back their horses just before a race. The women on the back are copied straight from ancient Roman wall paintings he saw in Pompeii. Look up *The Cleveland Museum of Art* to see more of his fast, lively sketches.
The inscription at the upper left of the sheet states that Géricault executed these studies at the spring of the Magdelaine, near the forest of Fontainebleau, which he visited in 1819. The male figures closely resemble the earlier studies he made while in Italy of peasants during horse races at annual Roman carnivals. Here, men struggle to keep control of their unseen animals during the moments before the race. The verso female figures, visible though the paper, derive directly from Pompeiian paintings of bacchanals, or revelers participating in festivals honoring Bacchus, the god of wine.
Géricault died at a young age and had a professional career lasting only just over a decade.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (French: ; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a French painter and lithographer.
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