His first masterpiece, The Charging Chasseur, which is also in the Louvre, was accepted for the Paris Salon of 1812. Géricault was a specialist in painting horses. He got his inspiration from Michelangelo, Gros, and especially Rubens. While Géricault received some formal training, he was largely self-educated. He is one of the founders of Romanticism, an art movement that was further developed by Eugene Delacroix. Who is Géricault? Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) was a painter and lithographer from France. Some people in this painting are still trying to get the attention of the ship, while others have already given up, turned around, and sit down in disappointment. However, the ship does not seem to see them. After 13 days, the people on the raft finally see a ship that could rescue them. Moral: The moral is one of despair, hope, and persistence. Two survivors wrote a book about their experiences and the full text of that book is available for free. When the raft was discovered by a rescue ship 13 days later, only 15 people were alive (of which five died within days after their rescue). Many of them died because of a lack of food, fights, suicide, or cannibalism. There was very little food on the raft, it was half underwater, and could not be steered. About 150 people got on an improvised raft of 66 ft (20m) long and 23 ft (7m) wide (see the picture below based on a drawing of one of the survivors). The majority of passengers used the lifeboats to get to the African coast. However, there were not enough lifeboats to carry everybody. The ship was damaged, and the passengers needed to be evacuated. Navigational mistakes caused the ship to run aground in shallow water about 30 miles (50 km) from the coast of Mauritania. In 1816, it left from Rochefort, France, in the direction of Senegal, where the British would hand over the port of Saint-Louis to the French. What it the Raft of the Medusa? The Medusa was a French warship. In the left foreground, a father with a red cloth holds the dead body of his son in front of him. The man stands with his right leg on a barrel of wine, which is the only liquid they had to drink on the raft. Géricault gave this man a very prominent place as a political statement against slavery. The survivor that reaches highest is an African man. It seems that there are four or five dead bodies, mostly in the foreground. However, they are unsuccessful at first and only two hours later the ship locates the raft and the survivors are rescued. Some of the survivors frantically try to get the attention of the ship. After spending 13 days on a raft on the open sea – surrounded by big waves – the surviving members of The Medusa notice a ship on the horizon (see the tiny ship on the horizon above the man on the right with a red garment around his upper legs). What do you see? A moment about two hours before the survivors of a shipwreck are rescued. Where? First floor, room 700 of the Denon wing in the Louvre
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