Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824)

Théodore Géricault’s interest and fascination with equine beauty is evident across his personal life and his representative oeuvre, with Cheval écorché representing both a pedagogical work of self-interest as well as an expression of this animal grace. Géricault’s anatomical fanaticism, perhaps greater recognized for his studies of body parts concretized in his Le Radeau de La Méduse, takes form in a horse whose sides have been seemingly peeled away to reveal the musculature and skeletal structure beneath. The artist's wax model of 1822 - a preliminary study to an equestrian group - and later plaster and bronze casts shown in the Salon was the subject of Edgar Degas's Études d'après Théodore Géricault of 1860 sold Christie's, Paris, 23 March 2017, lot 12.