Swiss Sentry at the Louvre
Medium
Lithograph on ivory wove paper (discolored to cream)
Dimensions
Image: 39.7 × 33 cm (15 11/16 × 13 in.); Sheet: 49.1 × 38.7 cm (19 3/8 × 15 1/4 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
195665
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Spanning the rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire, Théodore Géricault’s career culminated during the fractious period of the French Restoration. Though dimmed by brief and disenchanting military service (1815) and the disappointments of the Napoleonic era, he found in lithography an appropriate match for his awareness of the politics of contemporary France. While crossing the Tuileries gardens outside of the Musée du Louvre, a peg-legged French veteran at left confronts a sentry of the Swiss R...
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 ...