Géricault

PROVENANCE:

Collection of Eugène Delacroix and given by him to Mme. Julie Colin, according to the catalogue of the Charpentier gallery, 1938 (see below); given to the family of the comte de Mandat-Grancey of Dijon; Edouard Napoléon César Edmond Mortier, 5^th Duc de Trévise (1883-1946), his sale, Paris, Galerie Jean Charpentier, 19 May 1938, lot 32 “ Collection d’Eugène Delacroix qui donna l’oeuvre à Mme Collin, lorsqu’elle était à son service. Celle-ci en fit ensuite don à la famille du comte de Mandat-Grancey, à Dijon” ¹ ; purchased for 100,000 francs by M. Paul Baudoin (1894-1963), thence by descent.

LITERATURE:

J. Siegfried, ‘The romantic artist as a portrait painter’, Marsyas, VIII, 1957-1959, p.33, note 13, as Géricault, portrait de Delacroix; Lorenz Eitner, ‘Géricault: An album of drawings in the Art Institute, Chicago’, Chicago1960, p.42, under Folio 62; F.H. Lem, ‘Géricault portraitiste’, L’Arte, June-July 1963, pp.91-92 as Géricault, Eugène Delacroix au col ouvert; Philippe Grunchec,Tout l’œuvre peint de Géricault, Paris 1978, no.A162 (asPortrait de jeune home au col ouvert, dit aussi portrait d’Eugène Delacroix Jeune); Lorenz Eitner, review of Philippe Grunchec’sTout l’oeuvre peint de Géricault, Burlington Magazine, vol.122, No.924, March 1980, p.209; Germain Bazin, Théodore Géricault, étude critique, documents et catalogue raisonné, vol. V, Paris 1992, p.253-254, cat.1755 (as auteur inconnu) and p.93; to be included in the Catalogue raisonné des tableaux de Théodore Géricault, currently in preparation by Bruno Chenique as Portrait d’Eugène Delacroix.

This rediscovered portrait, which has been recorded and illustrated in black and white in the artist’s literature though not seen in the original since 1938, is a magnificent and historically importantexample of Géricault’s portraiture. Once part of the significant group of Géricault’s works in the collection of the connoisseur, the Duc de Trévise, it was included in his sale under the description ‘Jeune Homme au col ouvert’ with a note detailing the earlier provenance and an explanation of the traditional identification of the painting as a portrait of the young Delacroix. The picture was amongst the few works mentioned in the introduction to the catalogue by the critic and museum director Paul Jamot as ‘ Une “Tête de jeune home” au profil incisif, à l’œil de feu, évoque le futur auteur des “Massacres de Scio” et des “Croisés” d’une manière encore plus saisissante .’ Since that sale, it has been in the same private collection in Paris.

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 Géricault’s studies of Male Nudes, which Grunchec dates to around 1817and to various other portraits: the Portrait of a Shipwrecked Man²(46 x 37 cms.) as well as that known as Mustapha³(60 x 48cms.) both of which arein the Musée des Beaux Arts, Besançon. Comparable also is the larger and more sombre depiction of the Vendéen⁴ (81 x 64.5cms.) in the Louvre and the gruesome head of a guillotined man now in the Art Institute of Chicago⁵ (41 x 38cms) – compare, for example, the brushstrokes of the white collar in the present work with the brushwork of the white cloth in the Chicago picture. 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 Dedreux⁶(45.5 x 37.5cms) which was also owned by the Duc de Trévise and recorded by Clément.⁷ A further comparable work is the seemingly unfinished portrait of a young man (47 x 38cms), again recorded by Clémentand now in the Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth. These two last mentioned works share with the present painting a certain directness and informality indicative of familiarity between artist and sitter. (See comparative illustrations)

Géricault was deeply admired by Delacroix who, it is well-known, spent time in the older artist’s studio in the period around 1817-1819, even modeling for the Raft of the Medusa for a figure with a shock of black hair seen from the back⁸. The two men first met in 1815 in Guérin’s studio and Delacroix recorded in a notebook that Géricault admitted him into his circle and introduced him to his family⁹. Delacroix’s appearance was described by Théophile Gautier in the following terms ‘ ses abondants cheveux noirs … ses yeux fauves à l’expression féline, couverts d’épais sourcils… son menton volontaire et puissant…, lui composait une physionomie d’une beauté farouche, étrange, éxotique, presque inquiétante’. ¹⁰ Underneath a dark jacket, the present sitter wears a white shirt with a broad collar let loose by the low knot of a colourful scarf, the kind of clothes seen in the portraits of artists by Jean Alaux and a selfportrait by Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin¹¹. Bazin did not take seriously either the attribution or the identification of the sitter, commenting that the portrait must surely represent some stable boy (‘quelque garcon de l’écurie) but Lorenz Eitner described this painting as ‘…of the highest quality and certainly genuine’ and possibly representing Delacroix¹². Alfred Robaut, compiler of the catalogue raisonné of Delacroix’s work, in his introduction, lists amongst likenesses of the artist a lost portrait drawing by Géricault of around 1820, (like the present work, unknown to Clément, author of Géricault’s first catalogue) which was in the sale of the collection of Achille Dévéria (9 April 1858, lot 142). He too affirms that Delacroix posed for Géricault for the Raft of the Medusa. Robaut then illustrates an etching by François Villot after Delacroix’s self portrait drawing said to date from around 1819¹³ which, with its deep set eyes and somewhat sulky mouth bears an extremely strong resemblance to the present sitter, an affinity further supported by the painting identified as a self portrait of circa 1816 in the Musée des Beaux Art, Rouen, once itself thought to be by Géricault (see Comparative illustrations attached).

The contemporary descriptions of Delacroix and the comparisons with the surviving, known portraits of the artist as a young man, make the identification of this charismatic head as Delacroix extremely convincing. Moreover, additional supporting evidence has recently come to light regarding the provenance first recorded by the Duc de Trévise, on information presumably provided by the Mandat-Grancey family. Michèle Hannoosh, editor of the new edition of Delacroix’s journals (published in 2009) gives the record ‘Colin, Julie. Bonne de Delacroix...’ and recounts the story as told by Léon Riesener, Delacroix’s cousin, that Jenny, well-known as Delacroix’s servant up until the time of his death, had engineered the departure of her predecessor Julie, although Delacroix himself briefly re-instated her¹⁴. The comings and goings of Julie and the distress of Jenny are recorded in Delacroix’s own journal entry of 14 April 1854 and in a note written on a sketch: ‘Le jour où Julie est revenue. 22 Avril 54. Samedi’.¹⁵ It is also known that Delacroix left the considerable sum of 10,000 francs to Julie in his will. Intriguingly, Géricault also appears to have had a Julie in his household ‘la curieuse Julie’ mentioned in a letter of 1822/3¹⁵.

The period 1817-1819 follows on from Géricault’s somewhat precipitate return from Rome. Heading north, he passed through Siena and briefly met up with his greatest friend Dedreux-Dorcy before reaching Paris in the autumn of 1817. Countless sketches, drawings and a smaller number of finely worked gouaches testify to his activity during this period and his fascination with what he saw in Rome but Géricault was there for less than a year and returned having apparently suffered extremes of loneliness and depression. He moved back into his father’s house on the then outskirts of Paris, in the rue des Martyrs at the foot of Montmartre. This semi-rural bohemian area was known as La Novelle Athènes; the rue des Martyrs ran like a village street up towards the hill between gardens and scattered houses. Almost next door to the studio of Horace Vernet and surrounded by painters, sculptors, writers and Bonapartists, Géricault fell back into a hot-house of artistic and political ferment. He also resumed the love-story (which he had partly gone to Italy to escape) with Alexandrine-Modeste de Saint Martin (his aunt by marriage) and in 1818 she bore his child. Géricault spent three years in Paris before leaving for England. In this short period of great personal drama, having spent time painting academy studies (as he did in the studio of Guérin) and re-located to a much larger studio, he created the masterpiece of his career, The Raft of the Medusa which was exhibited at the Salon of 1819. He also produced a series of magnificent drawings and easel paintings. In Italy Géricault had absorbed the lessons of Classical Rome and of Michelangelo and back in Paris he turned to the world around him, to contemporary events, both political and literary, but also more specifically to the people before his eyes; as Bazin writes: ‘C’est à ce moment-là qu’il se fait volontiers portraitiste, peignant ses modèles à l’atelier ou dans son entourage.’’¹⁶ The sense of drama in the present portrait could very well be inspired by the characters Géricault became fascinated with in Paris, the seductive masculine typecasts of soldiers, liberals, writers and painters, here captured in the youthful arrogance of Delacroix, his ambitious fellow artist.

Notes:

1. According to Philippe Grunchec ‘renseignement que nous n’avons pu verifier. Nous avons retrouvé la trace de ce portrait dans la collection du comte de Mandat-Grancey à Dijon. According to the catalogue of the collection of the Duc de Trévise, the provenance of the portrait entitled Portrait de Jeune Homme au col ouvert ‘viendrait corroborer’ the hypothesis, repeated a number of times, that the portrait represents the youthful Delacroix (born 1798)

2. See exhibition catalogue, Géricault, Grand Palais, Paris 1992, cat. 172, fig.278

3. Ibid. cat.281, fig.308

4. Ibid. cat.140, fig.198

5. Ibid, cat.180, fig.217

6. Ibid. cat.129, fig.182. See Provenance, lot 31 and Clément, p.308, cat.124.

7. Ibid., cat.128, fig.181

8. See Charles Clément, Géricault, A biographical and critical study with a Catalogue raisonné of the Master’s works, (reprint of 3^rd edition of 1879) New York 1974, p.301, ‘celui qui est tombé, la tête en avant, et appuyé au bord du radeau, Eugène Delacroix.’ And Louis Batissier, Géricault a section from La Revue du dix-neuvième siècle, Rouen [1841], pp.10-11.

9. See Louis Véron, Memoires d’un bourgeois de Paris, Paris 1854, vol.1, pp.233-238.

10. Quoted by Alfred Robaut in ‘L’oeuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix, peintures dessins gravures lithographies…, Paris 1885, p. XLV. [his thick black hair … feline eyes covered by thick eyebrows.. his willful, powerful chin giving him a physiognomy of a wild beauty, strange, exotic, almost unsettling]

11. See the portrait of Léon Pallière by Jean Alaux painted in 1817 or the selfportrait by Paulin Guérin thought to date from the same year. (See comparative illustrations)

12. See Literature,

13. See Robaut, op. cit., p.XLVI, no.9 and p.IX, no.20. See also a drawing by Delacroix of the same period in the Louvre, see Luigina Rossi Bortolatto, L’opera pittorica completa di Delacroix, Milan 1972, p.83, fig.2. and the study in the Chicago sketchbook of a young man (Folio 62)– described by Bazin as wearing a police bonnet – but described by Eitner as a likeness of Delacroix (Bazin, op. cit., vol.V, p.254, no.1757). [The cap could perhaps be of the Phrygian type worn by revolutionaries and liberals].)

14. See Eugène Delacroix, Journal, nouvelle édition intégrale, edited by Michèle Hannoosh, Paris 2009, vol.II, ‘Répertoire biographique, p.2144.

15. As above: Delacroix, 2009, vol. I, p.751 and note 86 and also vol.II, p.1711 and note 6.

16. See Bazin, op.cit., vol.I, p.71, doc.228.