The destruction of the ideal: Romanticism and Gericault's portraits of the insane

This thesis discusses the five portraits of the insane created by Theodore Gericault at some point between 1819 and his death in 1824. I approached this not as an overly biographical subject but one which allows us to gain a greater understanding of the period after the French Revolution and between the styles of Davidian classicism and Romanticism. Additionally, I placed the subject paintings among the liberalization of French psychology during this immediate period under J.-E.-D. Esquirol and Etienne-Jean Georget, for whom the portraits were supposedly painted.;Much has been studied regarding the circumstances of Gericault committing supposedly ten images (five of which survive) of patients suffering from insanity, or monomania, to canvas. Several scholars have attempted to attribute the paintings to certain dates and to certain conditions from which Gericault might have suffered. Scholars have also posited that Gericault in fact might have been committed to a clinic suffering from depression and decline of mental function; in this case Gericault would have been painting fellow sufferers rather than fulfilling a commission. While these circumstances might certainly affect our viewership of these works, I focused my thesis on how the paintings may be extrapolated to a broader study. These portraits reveal much about how Gericault approached his subjects, how he disassociated himself from conventional portrayals of the insane, and how he reflected profound shifts in politics, popular culture, and artistic styles. In Raft of the Medusa, Gericault first began to explore the placement of weakness among superficially classical subject matter. But Gericault's portraits of the insane demonstrate a point in his career in which he had come to embody his full potential. My thesis demonstrates that these paintings represent a significant moment in portraiture, and certainly reveal much about Gericault himself.