Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

1, Géricault, Head of a Guillotined Man, 1818-19, Art Institute
of Chicago, oil on panel.
2. Géricault, Portrait of A Young Man, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art
Foundation.
describes the lively saleroom, full of museum curators
and directors, collectors and their advisors, dealers
and society figures and after hectic bidding records a
total achieved of nearly 2 and a half million francs.
As Philippe Grunchec has proposed, having recently
examined the picture first hand, this work may be
dated to around 1817-1819. On stylistic grounds,
the brushwork and the tremendous confidence of the
execution may be compared to various other portraits:
the Portrait of a Shipwrecked Man 4 as well as that
known as Mustapha 5 (both of which are in the Musée
des Beaux Arts, Besançon. Comparable also, is the
larger and more sombre depiction of the Vendéen 6 in
the Louvre and the gruesome head of a guillotined man
now in the Art Institute of Chicago 7 (fig.1), in which the
brushstrokes of the white cloth are extremely similar
to the collar in the present work. Grunchec dates
all these paintings to the Quatrième Période (1817-
1821), immediately following Géricault’s return from
Italy and including his work on the Raft of the Medusa.
To this period as well belongs the portrait presumed
to be of Alfred Dedreux 8 , also owned by the Duc de
Trévise and recorded by Clément, which shows the
same treatment of the hair as it catches the light as well
as the comparably scumbled background. A further
3. Géricault, Study of a Figure (Eugène Delacroix) for the Raft
of the Medusa, black chalk, Musée de Beaux-Arts, Besançon.
4. Géricault, detail from The Raft of the Medusa, Musée
du Louvre.
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