Theodore Gericault Quotes

Sadly, there are very few, attributable, translated quotes from the life of Gericault but this section draws all of them together and also outlines some of the opinions of others on his achievements and artistic style.

The work of this artist serves as a better explanantion of his personality and career than just a small amount of written resources. That said, others' opinions of Gericault and some of his most famous paintings can also help us to piece together a better picture of the man. Those looking to understand more about the Renaissance, Baroque and Romanticist periods should look at quotes from Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Delacroix.

Famous Quotes by Theodore Gericault

Is it not dangerous to have students study together for years, copying the same models and approximately the same path?

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour.

To draw and paint after the great Old Masters. Read and compose - Anatomy, Antiquities - Music - Italian. - Take courses in ancient art, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, at two o'clock... draw after the antique... go to M. Guerin's in order to paint after nature... Concern myself only with the style of the Old Masters and compose, without going out and always alone.

Gericault describing his methods of study, most of which was carried out at The Louvre

Quotes about Theodore Gericault by Art Historians and Fellow Artists

No one would dare say that this artist, so passionately in love with his art, had not sometime, at the height of his dream, distained the art himself. He was really, and in the best sense of the term, a Byronic soul, he was propelled outside himself... I would say that Gericault was an eccentric. A complex nature, difficult to grasp in its various and often contradictory nuances, a nature constantly in struggle, traversed by great currents that pulled it in many different directions, three strains of almost equal power stirred in him; the soul that surged towards the ideal, the spirit that kept him fastened to reality and the positive instincts of his race.

Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer

Géricault is now identified as a pioneer of Romanticism in French painting. He loved horses, and dramatic images of rearing horses feature in his work. He was born at Rouen, and from 1808 trained in Paris with Carle Vernet. But after two years he left Vernet - saying 'One of my horses would have devoured six of his' - to go to the Neo-classical painter Pierre Guérin, with whom his friend Delacroix later studied. An admirer of English art, like Delacroix, he visited England in 1820-1, returning in a state of poor health. From his last years date an exceptional series of portraits, commissioned by a friend, of the inmates of a lunatic asylum.

The National Gallery, London, UK

Géricault soon left the classroom, choosing to study at the Louvre, where from 1810 to 1815 he copied paintings by Rubens, Titian, Velázquez and Rembrandt. During this period at the Louvre he discovered a vitality he found lacking in the prevailing school of Neoclassicism. Much of his time was spent in Versailles, where he found the stables of the palace open to him, and where he gained his knowledge of the anatomy and action of horses.

Wikipedia