Romanticism, topicality, sensuality…

The Raft of the Medusa

Théodore Géricault

When you leave the Salle des États, turn your attention to the large 19th-century French paintings in the Salle Mollien...

At the Salon of 1819, Théodore Géricault presented his huge painting The Raft of the Medusa, a dramatic scene illustrating the recent wreck of a French ship – an event that had shocked the public. One hundred and fifty people drifted for thirteen days on a makeshift raft, falling prey to thirst, starvation, disease and cannibalism. Only fifteen survived to tell the tale.

The pyramidal composition and precision of the drawing are classical in inspiration, but Géricault chose to cast a cold and sickly light on the figures of the sick and the dead, heaped together on their precarious raft. The artist spent eight months on his painting, meeting survivors, building models, and visiting morgues and hospitals to observe the dead and dying. The harsh realism of the result divided critics, who were either fascinated or repelled.

The Raft of the Medusa entered the Louvre in 1824, shortly after the painter’s death.

Liberty Leading the People

Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix is regarded as one of the great Romantic painters. Contrary to popular belief, Liberty Leading the People does not portray the French Revolution of 1789, but the three-day uprising of July 1830 when Parisians took to the streets to defend their freedoms – that of the press in particular – from the tyrannical rule of Charles X. In this work described by Delacroix as ‘a modern subject, a barricade’, the allegorical figure of Liberty has something of the beauty of a Greek goddess but is personified by a sensual and vibrant woman of the people. This painting, the most famous by Delacroix, has been referenced in all kinds of freedom fights.