\paperw19995 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 French painter, engraver, and sculptor.\par
After having spent his early childhood in Rouen during the years of the Revolut
ion, he moved to Paris with his family in 1798. From 1808 to 1812 he studied painting, first in the studio of Vernet and then under P.N. GuΘrin, a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, gaining experience by copying the old masters on his frequent visits to the L
ouvre. From the beginning of his career he showed a passion for horses, of which he made numerous studies. Later they were to become one of his favorite subjects. He spent from 1816 to 1817 in Italy, where he studied Michelangelo and Caravaggio in partic
ular, interpreting the classical and popular world of Rome in forms that were completely new and extremely free. Typical of this are the many studies he devoted to an event staged in Rome during Carnival, the race of wild horses from Piazza del Popolo to
Piazza Venezia. These were preparatory sketches for a large picture that he never painted (\i Race of the Berber Horses\i0 , Paris, Louvre). In Rome he got to know his compatriot Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Back in France, he met EugΦne Delacroix in
1817 and shortly afterward began to collect background information and make studies for his most celebrated work, the \i Raft of the Medusa\i0 (1818-19, Paris, Louvre), based on a shipwreck that had taken place in 1816. From this time on contemporary ev
ents became his preferred subject. From 1820 to 1821 GΘricault was in England, where he saw the work of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner and painted chiefly sporting subjects (\i Horse Racing at Epsom\i0 , 1821, Paris, Louvre). Energy is
a constant theme in his work, initially symbolized by the horse. Later it also found expression as an affirmation of the individual in the context of social oppression. This is evident in his portraits of the mentally ill, painted after his return to Par
is (\i Deranged Woman with a Gambling Fixation\i0 , 1822-23, Paris, Louvre). A similar, precocious realism and sense of social commitment characterizes his various drawings and paintings of black men and women û a testimony to his concern over the questi
on of slavery û \i Portrait of Negro\i0 , Chalon-sur-Sa⌠ne, MusΘe Denon. After two years of suffering, a badly treated fall from a horse led to his death in 1842.
