Portrait of a Man
Medium
Graphite on cream laid paper, perimeter mounted on cream wove paper
Dimensions
21.8 × 28 cm (8 5/8 × 11 1/16 in.)
Classification
drawings (visual works)
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
113320
Art Historical Context
Step into the intimate world of Théodore Géricault'sPortrait of a Man* (1818/19), a masterful graphite drawing on cream laid paper, now housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings Department. Measuring just 21.8 × 28 cm, this small-scale work exemplifies Géricault's extraordinary skill as a draughtsman during his early maturity. Created around the time he was revolutionizing French art with dramatic history paintings like *The Raft of the Medusa* (1819), it captures the subject's intense gaze and rugged features with delicate precision. Géricault, a leading figure in Romantic...
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 ...