Thodore Gricault - Nina M Athanassoglou-Kallmyer

A new monograph exploring the life and works of Thodore Gricault (1791-1824), an artist whose life, imagination and legacy continue toenthrall audiences, artists and critics alike.

Gricault's small but varied oeuvre has consistently defied easy definition; the artist himself struggled throughout his shortcareer with the conflicting demands of the grand Neo-classical style and radical Romanticism. He was drawn to subjects of drama andhorror, painting gruesome scenes of life in France as Napoleon's Empire ceded to a restored Monarchy- few more shocking than thecannibalism among shipwrecked victims that inspired his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa.Yet equally significant in his artistic production wasa passion for the wild imagery of horses, whicheven dictated his choice of painting teacher and led tosome of the greatest equestrian portraits and history paintings in French art. Gricault also tookgreat interest in the depths of the human mind, which inspired his riveting portraits.

In thisincisive and comprehensive survey, Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer pays tribute to established Gricault scholarship,but alsoreassesses the career of an artist too easily miscast as the archetypal 'tortured soul' of art-historical Romantic mythology. Athanassoglou-Kallmyerdiscusses all the artist's key paintings and drawings, with particular attention to the iconicRaft of the Medusa, the history of its production and its artistic afterlifeup to the present day.