Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault (Rouen 1791-1824 Paris)

This is a reworked tracing of a drawing in black chalk, brown wash, heightened with white on brown paper now in the Louvre (Bazin, op. cit., V, no. 1545) which is generally dated circa 1818-19.

Charles Clément (1821-1887), the author of the first catalogue of Géricault’s work, mentioned that he owned ‘a very beautiful repetition in graphite, on tracing paper, of the horse and the fallen mameluke. The rest of the composition is barely sketched. This drawings was given to me by M. Lehoux who got it directly from Géricault’ (Clément, op. cit.). Clément is refering to Pierre-François Lehoux (1803-1891), an Orientalist painter who had been a close friend of Géricault.