Notice de l'oeuvre :
This bust–length portrait which concentrates all our attention on the figure’s overwhelmed expression, resembles perfectly the series of studies of heads painted by Gericault while he was developing his great painting of contemporary history, the Raft of the Medusa. The artist prepared this ambitious composition, which he intended for the Salon of 1819, over a long period of time. After studying the fait divers by gathering together a large number of documents and interviewing directly some of the survivors of the Medusa, he prepared his composition with the help of a scale model of the Raft and wax figurines, hesitating between different episodes. He studied decomposing bodies on cadavers from the morgue and amputated limbs, and sought accurate attitudes and expressions for his shipwrecked people by asking a wide variety of models to pose, from real survivors of the Medusa to professional models, via hisfriends and artists around him. The young painter Eugène Delacroix thus posed for the body of the man lying on his stomach, his face against the raft, in the foreground of the large painting (ill. 2).
According to Lorenz Eitner, Gericault apparently asked a patient from the Hôpital Beaujon to pose for the study of the figure known as the one of the father, now at the Museum in Besançon (ill.1)12. The haggard air of our bearded man, his olive complexion and emaciated face given volume by violent chiaroscuro unfailingly evoke this same figure of the “father” in the large painting.
A veritable incarnation of the despair and impotence of man in the face of death, he is one of the figures who made a mark on the critics when the painting was exhibited for the first time at the Salon. The lifelike expression provoked the empathy of viewers who identified him immediately as a despairing father, holding on to his dying son with one arm. As realistic as it may be, this figure is however not the portrait of a particular man but the synthesis of several faces and expressions. As Charles Clément the first biographer and cataloguer of Gericault13, reported “to create the old man on the left of the Raft, Gericault used several models”. During the posing sessions,
the artist imbued himself with the features of each individual and the emotion he provoked in him to create a new physiognomy, capable of expressing as accurately as possible the emotions he sought to describe.
Relying on contemporary reports, Charles Clément cites two sources of inspiration for this figure of the “father”: the professional model Cadamour14 and Lebrun15, a friend of the painter. Gericault’s posthumous inventory and posthumous sales of Gericault’s works also include several “studies of figures relating to the scene of the shipwreck” and other “head studies” that could also relate to it. In the absence of any precise description or connection with clearly identified portraits, it is however hard to find correspondences between the names mentioned at the time and the paintings referred to in the written sources and a fortiori, with the corpus of works that has survived.
An anecdote reported by Clément however allows us to propose a hypothesis for the identification of our portrait.
“Mr. Lebrun had just had jaundice. Gericault asked him to pose for a study that he was going to use for his Raft of the Medusa. This painting was executed in Sèvres, in 1818 or in 1819, in the same room as the Diligence de Sèvres.”16
The dimensions of this portrait (46 x 38 cm) do not correspond to ours, but Clément then states that Gericault made several studies from Lebrun’s head. “He also created separately, before starting his large canvas, a few studies for living figures in his painting, including the one for the black man seen from the back that is owned by Mr. Lehoux. He was seeking models, looking for them everywhere and was very happy when he found frightful ones; his friend Mr. Lebrun tells, on this occasion, an anecdote that deserves to be reported. It shows Gericault at work; it is the ardent artist seized in the instant, and painting himself from life.
“In those days, says Mr. Lebrun, when he was painting his composition, I had jaundice that lasted a long time, and which was very intense. After forty days of suffering and difficulties, I decided to leave Paris and go to Sèvres to be alone there and to wait for my recovery, which by then was only a matter of time. I had much difficulty finding accommodation; my cadaverous appearance frightened all the innkeepers and none wanted to see me die in his place. I was obliged to turn to a landlord who took pity on me... I had been staying with him for eight days when one afternoon, amusing myself on the port watching passers-by, I saw Gericault with one of his friends. He looked at me, at first didn’t recognize me, went into the inn with the pretext of having a drink, looked at me carefully, then all of a sudden, recognizing me, ran to me and grabbed my arm: “Ah! My friend! You look beautiful!” he cried. I was scary, children ran away from me, taking me for a dead man; but I was beautiful for the painter who was looking everywhere for the colour of the dying; he urged me to go to his place to pose for the Medusa. I was still too sick; I was bored in a way that overwhelms men who are struck by the disease from which I was suffering, so I could not decide. “Do better, I told Gericault, come here, bring canvases, paint brushes, colours; come to make studies, spend a week with me; during this time, I will get better, and then I’ll go to your studio, my colour will be even more real; it only disappears slowly and for more than a month I will be able to serve as your model.” Gericault indeed came to Sèvres to spend a few days with Mr. Lebrun. He made several heads from him, including the one for the father who is holding his dying son on his knees.”17
If we are to believe Clément, and Lebrun himself, while staying with his friend who was suffering from jaundice, Gericault thus made several studies for the figure of the “father” on the Raft. The age of the model depicted on our sketch could correspond to Lebrun (who was born in 1788) at the time of the Raft while his emaciated face and “deathly colour” could very well be those of a man suffering from jaundice. Finally, the overwhelmed expression of the person portrayed coincides perfectly with a second anecdote reported directly by Lebrun in a letter to Louis Batissier dated 8 April 1836: “He made me pose for several heads; among others the one of the father who is holding the body of his son who has just died. He had explained the situation to me and I made an effort to give my features the pensive and profound expression he wanted. I think this study was sold for quite a lot after he died.”18
What could the study for the “father” mentioned by Lebrun in Gericault’s posthumous sale correspond to? It could be the “head of a man with a grey beard” that was acquired by the Comte d’Houdetot and which then appeared in his sale (12-14 December 1859, n°57).
The description provided by the catalogue is sadly too vague for this to be confirmed. Gericault’s students also acquired several head studies at the painter’s posthumous sale. These sketches reappear then in their own posthumous sales where the name of the models is often identified incorrectly with that of the owners. The same applies to the “head of a sick man” of the Champmartin sale which probably shows a portrait of Lebrun posing for the figure of the “father” although the auction catalogue specifies that it is a “study of Mr Champmartin, ill. 19.
Here we come up against the limit of the textual sources that, forgetting their eminent incompleteness, art historians tend to favour while neglecting a firsthand document which by its very materiality cannot lie: the painting itself. Our study indeed presents all the characteristics of the artist’s manner in the years that precede his journey to England. This handling, which can be seen by the naked eye in the works from this period, has been analysed in great detail by Catherine Martin and Marie-Hélène Dampérat20. From the laboratory examinations of the paintings in the Louvre, the authors describe precisely the technique used by Gericault. The layer of preparation applied to the canvas is generally a coating of lead white and oil. The composition is then laid out with a drawing in pen and ink, but sometimes oil sketches do not have any underdrawing.
To execute the actual painting layer, the artist does not make a painted sketch. First he applies the background, leaving the areas around the figures untouched. The area of preparation left free between the background and the figure is then covered with dark glazes that are applied with delicate touches. Infrared photography of our sketch reveals exactly the same technique (ill. 3): On a canvas prepared with a lead white coating, the painter has captured the features of his model directly in oil, without any underdrawing or painted sketch. The background seems to have been applied first, in thin diluted layers applied with a broad brush, leaving the surface of the head and bust in reserve. This empty space was then covered with a brown glaze before the figure was built up with small rather fluid and diluted touches in dark shades that are gradually thicker with more oil in the lighter areas. The reserve around the head appears clearly in the infrared photograph of our painting, around the back of the head and the neck. The highlights, which were the last to be applied, are not merged into the paint, but voluntarily worked in high relief to hem the border of the lower eyelid and illuminate dramatically the projecting parts of the face (ill. 4).
The little touches of white and yellow are literally crushed on the canvas using a short brush with hard hairs that marks the vigorous movement of the paintbrush in the material. This dense, firm and confident handling is characteristic of Gericault’s manner. Using this rapid and synthetic technique, with these violent contrasts of material and light, the painter has managed to express in this small format all the distress of those shipwrecked from the Medusa, concentrated in the flabbergasted gaze of a single man.
Lilas Sharifzadeh
12. L. Eitner, Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, New York, 1972.
13. Charles Clément, Gericault, Étude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre du maître, Paris, 1868, n° 97.
14. Id., n°103.
15. Id., n°109.
16. Ibid. : « Portrait de M. Lebrun ».
17. Cf. C. Clément, op. cit., pp. 132-133.
18. J. Thuillier, P. Grunchec, Tout l’œuvre peint de Gericault, Paris, 1978, 1991 for the updated French edition, n°171.
19. Charles-Émile Callande de Champmartin Sale, 28-29 January 1884, n° 274 then 27 January1888, n ° 113 : « Tête d’homme. / Étude d’après M. Champmartin, malade» [Head of a man. / Study from Mr. Champmartin, ill].
20. Catherine Martin, Marie-Hélène Dampérat, Apport des examens de laboratoire à la connaissance de la pratique picturale
et de l’œuvre de Théodore Gericault, thesis from the École du Louvre, Paris, 1986-1987 (unpublished).
|
