Lucas Museum Adds a Study for Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa"

Conservator Joanna Neville with Lucas Museum's oil sketch of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa

Art in America has posted a video on the conservation of an oil study for Géricault's Raft of the Medusa owned by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. This is the first I've heard of this study or of the Lucas acquiring it. The tightly cropped, vertical-format painting shows only the apex of the pyramid of figures and is at reduced scale (the Louvre Raft of the Medusa is 23-1/2 ft wide). According to conservator Joanna Neville, the painting is by Géricault himself and came to her with several large tears, inexpert retouching, and discolored varnish. She is nearing the end of the painting's treatment.

The Senegal-bound Medusa, shipwrecked in 1816, became a symbol of the restored French monarchy's foundering ship of state. Géricault's large painting of 15 survivors on a raft caused a sensation at the 1819 Salon. The artist did many preparatory drawings and sketches. The Getty owns a small watercolor Sailboat and an oil study of the Haitian model Joseph, who posed for the Raft's pivotal figure. The Louvre has an unfinished oil sketch of the entire composition (below). It measures about 25 by 32 inches. Close to the final design, it lacks a few figures and has a brighter sky. 

Lucas skeptics have pointed out that "narrative art" isn't exactly a new concept. The history paintings of Titian, Poussin, and David would qualify (so who needs Norman Rockwell?) In recent years the Lucas has added several versions of famous "narrative" paintings owned by other museums, such as Robert Colescott's satirical take on Emmanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, John Singer Sargent's reverential homage to Velázquez's Las Meninas, and Criselda Vasquez's Latinx version of Grant Wood's American Gothic.

Théodore Géricault, sketch for Raft of the Medusa, 1818. Louvre