Mounted Officer and Other Sketches
1818/1819
Medium
Graphite, on cream wove paper (upper right corner missing), perimeter mounted on cream wove paper
Dimensions
27.8 × 22.6 cm (11 × 8 15/16 in.)
Classification
graphite
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
113335
Art Historical Context
In the bustling Prints and Drawings collection of the Art Institute of Chicago lies a dynamic sheet of sketches by Théodore Géricault titled *Mounted Officer and Other Sketches*, around 1818–9. Rendered in graphite on cream wove (measuring 27.8 × 22.6 cm, with the upper right corner notably missing), this work captures the French Romantic master's rapid, expressive hand. Géricault, famed for his dramatic masterpiece *The Raft of the Medusa (1819), often filled pages with studies of horses, riders, and military figures, reflecting his lifelong fascination with movement and the human form in act...
About the Artist
Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault · 1791–1824
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) was born into a prosperous bourgeois family in Rouen, France, the son of a lawyer who managed the family tobacco business. After moving to Paris around 1797, his artistic talent emerged early, nurtured in a circle that included his maternal uncle Jean-Baptiste Caruel and art dealer Jean-Louis Laneuville. Géricault began formal training in 1808 under ...