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拍品专文
A recent addition to the corpus of drawings by Théodore Géricault, this signed watercolour is part of a series of drawings and watercolours devoted to a Plaster-maker’s horse that the artist produced both during his stay in London between 1820 and 1821 and after his return to Paris.
The same horse appears, in reverse and hitched to a cart, in a related lithograph entitled Le cheval du plâtrier, executed in 1822 and published in Paris the following year (E. Brugerolles (ed.), Géricault: Dessins & estampes des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exh. cat., Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum, 1997-1998, p. 268, no. E.77). The preparatory drawing for this lithograph is offered in the next lot of this sale (lot 44). In this lithograph, in which the composition differs slightly, the draught horse prepares to pull a cart laden with sacks of plaster, while, in the dimness of the building in the background, the plasterer arrives carrying additional sacks to be loaded.
Towards the end of his life, Géricault reworked some of his earlier compositions in the form of finished watercolours to be placed with dealers and sold to collectors. The present sheet, of exceptional quality, is a particularly fine example of a signed, independent watercolour of this type. In comparison to the lithograph and the preparatory drawing (lot 44), the artist has here chosen to dispense with the cart and the figure of the plaster-maker altogether, in order to focus on the power of the horse, freed from its heavy burden but still tied to the wall.
The small sketches on the reverse of the present sheet may be dated, on stylistic grounds, to Gericault’s English period between 1820 and 1821, and seem to be related to the artist’s lithographs of this date. The rapid sketch of a farrier behind a horse, at the right of centre on the verso, may be an early study for the lithograph of The English Farrier, published in London (Bazin, op. cit., p.88, no. 2181), while the top-hatted figure seen from behind left of centre may be tentatively related to a similar figure, seen from a different angle, in the lithograph Un postillon, ou Les deux chevaux harnachés, published in Paris (ibid., no. 2457).
Bruno Chenique (in 2022) and Philippe Grunchec (in 2026) have confirmed the attribution.
The same horse appears, in reverse and hitched to a cart, in a related lithograph entitled Le cheval du plâtrier, executed in 1822 and published in Paris the following year (E. Brugerolles (ed.), Géricault: Dessins & estampes des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exh. cat., Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum, 1997-1998, p. 268, no. E.77). The preparatory drawing for this lithograph is offered in the next lot of this sale (lot 44). In this lithograph, in which the composition differs slightly, the draught horse prepares to pull a cart laden with sacks of plaster, while, in the dimness of the building in the background, the plasterer arrives carrying additional sacks to be loaded.
Towards the end of his life, Géricault reworked some of his earlier compositions in the form of finished watercolours to be placed with dealers and sold to collectors. The present sheet, of exceptional quality, is a particularly fine example of a signed, independent watercolour of this type. In comparison to the lithograph and the preparatory drawing (lot 44), the artist has here chosen to dispense with the cart and the figure of the plaster-maker altogether, in order to focus on the power of the horse, freed from its heavy burden but still tied to the wall.
The small sketches on the reverse of the present sheet may be dated, on stylistic grounds, to Gericault’s English period between 1820 and 1821, and seem to be related to the artist’s lithographs of this date. The rapid sketch of a farrier behind a horse, at the right of centre on the verso, may be an early study for the lithograph of The English Farrier, published in London (Bazin, op. cit., p.88, no. 2181), while the top-hatted figure seen from behind left of centre may be tentatively related to a similar figure, seen from a different angle, in the lithograph Un postillon, ou Les deux chevaux harnachés, published in Paris (ibid., no. 2457).
Bruno Chenique (in 2022) and Philippe Grunchec (in 2026) have confirmed the attribution.