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He remained there for two years, enjoying the equine culture and producing a body of lithographs, watercolors, and oils of jockeys and horses. The goal of painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel."ĭisappointed by the reception of The Raft of the Medusa, Géricault took the painting to England in 1820, where it was received as a sensational success. Géricault's work expressed a paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art and reality? Coupin (art critic of the Revue encyclopédique) was categorical: "Monsieur Géricault seems mistaken. Critics were divided: the horror and " terribilità" of the subject exercised fascination, but devotees of classicism expressed their distaste for what they described as a "pile of corpses," whose realism they considered a far cry from the "ideal beauty" incarnated by Girodet's Pygmalion and Galatea(1819) which triumphed the same year. The shipwreck had scandalous political implications at home-the incompetent captain, who had gained the position because of connections to the Bourbon Restoration government, fought to save himself and senior officers while leaving the lower ranks to die-and so Géricault’s picture of the raft and its inhabitants was greeted with hostility by the government. The painting shocked the public and divided critics at the 1819 Salon. The decision to paint a scene from contemporary history - one that was utterly of the moment - brought instant attention to this work, particularly as Gericault translated it in a manner befitting classical history painting (large-scale, with heroic and tragic elements). When the public learned of this, it became an international tragedy and a searing indictment of the current French government. When rescued by a passing British ship, only 15 men were left alive, of whom 5 died before they were able to reach land. Left to fend for themselves for 13 days, the passengers eventually resorted to cannibalism. When the raft proved too cumbersome, in a horrific act of cowardice and fear, the ship's leader cut the ropes to the raft.

The appointed governor of the colony and the top-ranking officers in the party left on the ship's six lifeboats leaving the remaining 147 passengers to be crowded onto a hastily made raft. The subject depicted is the artist's dramatic interpretation of the events beginning on July 2, 1816, when a French navy frigate crashed on its way to colonies in West Africa. He even sketched severed body parts in order to make the image as authentic as possible.

Géricault paid great attention to the details in this work. The sail of the raft is billowing in the wind while being tossed about a choppy ocean beneath a stormy sky. The only African figure on the raft waves a cloth at the top of a pile of a few men who are struggling to get the attention of a ship in the distance (located on the far right of the horizon line). The epic painting The Raft of the Medusa features a gruesome mass of figures afloat at sea, some dead, some struggling for life, in a tangled mass positioned on a crudely-made raft.