The life of Theodore Géricault was short, but the part played by this artist in the art history in France had a deep repercussion.

Indeed, beginning again with more force and of audacity the attempts the Large one to tear off painting with the neo-classic influence of David, Géricault will introduce the movement, the color, the topics borrowed from reality, in short, all kinds of essential components which will allow, after him (very exactly as from Delacroix, its spiritual heir), of speaking about a new school: romanticism.

Géricault passes its childhood to Rouen, within a family of the royalist middle-class, then it follows his father to Paris to finish its studies there. It enters, since 1806, in the workshop of Carle Vernet. A little later he will work as raises of Guerin. Its table entitled charging Officier of hunters of the imperial guard does not pass unperceived to the Living room of 1812, at one time when the neoclassicism and the academism prevail. This first success will hardly have continuations in the immediate future and the wounded Cuirassier leaving fire (1814) is hardly noticed. It is true that these two paintings, one and the other carried out before voyage of the artist in Great Britain, are still of very conventional invoice.

Before travelling on the other side of the channel, Géricault remains in Italy, where he very attentively studies Michel-Angel, which becomes, with Rubens, its true Master. Of return in France, it paints the Raft of the Jellyfish, accommodated with indifference with the Living room of 1819. It organizes, during the year 1820, a road show of this table in Great Britain. Work likes it more; Géricault remains two years in this country, where it practices horsemanship; with same passion, it takes for topic horses and riders in a set of admirable works, which they raise of the drawing, engraving or the oil-base paint (Derby of Epsom, 1821).

One is unaware of the reasons which push Géricault to be returned to France at the end of the year 1821. Perhaps has it the project to expose to the Living room. If it is the case, it does not give following this project and its life takes a disordered turn very quickly. It loses large sums of money to the Stock Exchange and in unhappy financial transactions. He spends not counting maintaining a way of life which envisages the maintenance of several horses. He leaves and works much, bringing to all that he does a kind of feverish haste. During years 1822-1823, fascinating for models of the mental lunatics, it carries out a series of ten portraits: Monomane of the play, the kleptomaniac Lunatic, Monomane of the desire, etc

Its health deteriorates. Little time after its return of Great Britain, it had made a fall of horse. An abscess which had been formed by the left side treated east, but a lesion with the spinal column passes unperceived. Two new shocks, one consecutive with an car accident, the other with a new fall of horse, involve an aggravation of its state. Géricault confines to bed in February 1823 to be raised more. He will die the following year. Its last drafts for the project of two large fabrics, the Opening of the doors of the Enquiry and the Draft of the Blacks, are the term of a work which is based on a technique where the drawing, perfectly controlled, integrating the forms into the color, is at the base of an art which translates an obsession of the dramatic substance of reality.