Cleveland Museum of Art

Compositional Study? (possibly for "Poussin’s Deluge") (verso)

Théodore GéricaultLinkedCulture matchlcp-aae2511b9770

Date: c. 1816
Medium: brown wash and black crayon
Culture: France, 19th century
Department: Drawings
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 166663

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Géricault's drawing of a man clutching the mane of a horse as they struggle together to stay afloat is a direct copy of a detail from one of Nicolas Poussin's (1594-1665) most celebrated paintings, The Deluge, or Winter (see photo). Small in scale but monumental in feeling, the sheet exemplifies the artist's "antique manner" of drawing, which he began to develop around 1815. This style, with its heavy contour lines and broad washes, developed in tandem with Géricault's renewed interest in copying works of art from the past, such as prints after ancient sculpture and works by Raphael (1483-1520), Michelangelo (1475-1564), and Poussin.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Bequest of Muriel Butkin
Provenance: Unidentified collector's mark upper left; Coutan Hauguet Schubert Milliet collection (Lugt 464, stamped, lower left, in brown ink); [sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris (16-17 December 1889), 50 no. 194: "Scène de Déluge. Etude d'apres Le Poussin. Dessin à la plume et à la sépia."]; Charmettant (according to Bazin, Charmettant purchased at Coutan-Hauguet sale for 80 francs). Marietta Peabody Tree and Ronald Tree [their sale, Sotheby-Parke-Bernet, New York (8-9 October 1976), no. 197, repr.]; [Shepherd Gallery, New York]; purchased in 1976.