Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault
Two Draft Horses with a Sleeping Driver1820–22
Two heavy draught horses stand patiently in harness while their driver dozes, set down in brush and brown and grey wash over pencil. More about this work
About this work
Two heavy draught horses stand patiently in harness while their driver dozes, set down in brush and brown and grey wash over pencil. Géricault spent much of 1820 and 1821 in England, where he was fascinated by the powerful working horses of London’s streets and made a series of lithographs of everyday English life. This drawing belongs to that interest in ordinary labour, treated with the same seriousness as the heroic subjects of his paintings.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Graphite
- Pencil. Graphite has been used for drawing since the 1500s; in 1795 Nicolas-Jacques Conté mixed it with clay, so its hardness could be graded.
Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault
French, 1791–1824 · Born in Rouen; died in Paris.
Géricault trained with Carle Vernet and Pierre-Narcisse Guérin and studied the old masters in the Louvre, but his passion for horses and modern events shaped his art. The Raft of the Medusa, shown in 1819, turned a recent shipwreck scandal into a vast, harrowing painting, prepared through studies of corpses and severed heads. He spent 1820–21 in England, where he made lithographs of street life and horses. He died at thirty-two after a series of riding accidents.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1996.365
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Drawings
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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