Cheval écorché

Théodore Géricault’s interest and fascination with equine beauty is evident across his personal life and his representative oeuvre, with Cheval écorché representing both a pedagogical work of self-interest as well as an expression of this animal grace. Géricault’s anatomical fanaticism, perhaps greater recognized for his studies of body parts concretized in his Le Radeau de La Méduse, takes form in the tensed, erect horse whose sides have been seemingly peeled away to reveal the musculature and skeletal structure underneath. The bronze endowed with a gravitas and quietude echoes Classical equestrian statuary. Despite being wholly laid bare, the horse has a tangible solidity to the form which is mirrored in Géricault’s similar treatment of the rigid horse of Cheval dans la tempête or similarly the tensed body of his Nu masculin in the Musée Bonnat. While this bronze archetypically demonstrates Géricault’s style, it arguably points Janus-faced to the artist’s personal biography. Antoine Étex, a noted 19th century artist who constructed the tomb of Géricault, noted in his Sixième Leçon of 16 December 1860, “Géricault, c’est le cheval incarné… Si on regarde sa tête, son masque moulé sur nature après sa mort, on trouve qu’il y a quelque chose qui se rapproche un peu de l’anatomie de la tête du cheval.” The Cheval écorché becomes equally a portrait of Gericault himself as well as a prefiguration of how he would meet his untimely death. This integration of passion and biography speaks to the importance of the model and its enduring relevance, further reflected in the numerous plaster copies studied by the burgeoning Impressionists of the late 19th century. The artist's wax model of 1822 - a preliminary study to an equestrian group - and later plaster and bronze casts shown in the Salon was the subject of Edgar Degas's Études d'après Théodore Géricault of 1860 sold Christie's, Paris, 23 March 2017, lot 12.