No artist took his obsession with horses as far as Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), an obsession that cost him his life after three badly treated falls. No other artist in the history of art has provoked so much epidermal debate as this contemporary of Delacroix, who died at the age of 32 and produced a prodigiously prolific body of work as a painter and, even more, as a draftsman. The exhibition “Géricault’s Horses,” organized until September 15 at the Museum of Romantic Life in Paris to commemorate the painter’s bicentenary, has been the subject of fresh controversy.
The controversy is not about the theme, nor about the staging, which is as didactic as it is intelligible. What has made experts and curators roar are the attributions given by art historian Bruno Chenique, which they have deemed fanciful. Of the 97 works on show, at least a third have come from private collections. Most are unpublished and do not appear in any of Géricault’s three catalogues raisonnés. They have nonetheless been presented as being by the artist himself. As soon as the exhibition opened on May 15, journalist Didier Rykner sounded the charge in La Tribune de l’Art: “Many of these ‘discoveries’ are far from convincing, to put it mildly. Géricault is a brilliant artist, everyone agrees. Many of these works are mediocre at best.”
‘Drawing full of hesitation’
The former director of the Museum of Romantic Life, Daniel Marchesseau, followed suit with an angry letter to the museum’s director, Gaëlle Rio. “Neither the exhibition nor the catalog meet the rigorous criteria expected of an establishment where precision and accuracy of transmission elements are the intangible rule,” said this major donor to the Musée d’Orsay. Critics have targeted the drawings in particular. “A real disaster,” said Paris dealer Nicolas Schwed, giving the example of a Study of Horses and Riders for Review by Louis XVIII, exhibited in the first room. “Géricault’s drawing is all curves, without lifting his pen or pencil. This drawing is full of hesitation, short straight lines. It’s very rough.”
It’s true that expertise is not an exact science. It relies on formal comparisons, and also on subjectivity and even faith. In the absence of bibliographical references or tangible elements of provenance, however, caution prevails. “Caution? On the contrary, an art historian is expected to make up his mind. There are unpublished works every day. Without unpublished works, there is no art history,” said Chenique, who has been working for 20 years on a new catalogue raisonné of Géricault. “Who among the critics has looked deeply into his work as long as I have? They call themselves specialists, but they’re just generalists.”
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