The Charging Chasseur
Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) · 1812
An officer of the mounted chasseurs of the Imperial Guard twists round in the saddle to look back, sabre raised, as his dappled grey horse rears on a slope. Smoke and fire fill the background; cannon and the tangle of battle are only suggested. The uniform is painted in detail, the fur trimmed pelisse, the red breeches, the tall bearskin cap, and the leopard skin saddle cloth swirls behind the rider. The horse, with its rolling eye and flaring nostrils, is at least as much the subject as the man.
Géricault was twenty one when he painted this, his first exhibited work, and it was shown at the Salon that opened in November eighteen twelve under the title Equestrian Portrait of Monsieur D., the sitter being a lieutenant named Dieudonné. The picture won a gold medal. Look at the diagonal that runs from the horse's hind hoof up through the rider's body to the tip of the sabre, and at the way the composition is tipped off balance, as if the whole group might slide down the slope. The paint is thick, quick and confident, learned from Gros and from Rubens, and the light comes from the fire behind, so that the officer is half in shadow.
Géricault showed it again at the Salon of eighteen fourteen, now as A Hussar Charging, alongside its pendant, The Wounded Cuirassier, which hangs nearby. After the artist's death in eighteen twenty four both pictures were sold at his estate sale, and the Louvre bought them at public auction in eighteen fifty one. The rider looking back over his shoulder, glamorous and uncertain at the same time, has been read as a portrait of the empire itself at the moment the Russian campaign was turning to disaster.
Did You Know? Géricault was twenty one and had never exhibited anything when this enormous canvas won a gold medal at the Salon of eighteen twelve.
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