France, 19th century / c. 1820
Fighting Horses
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Fighting Horses as drawing (France, 19th century · c. 1820).
Théodore Géricault began this work with sketches from life, which became a graphite underdrawing beneath the watercolors.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this drawing as watercolor over graphite and credits Théodore Géricault (French, 1791–1824).
The museum's collection notes: Théodore Géricault turned away from traditional subjects such as mythology and the Bible in favor of modernity, emotion, and drama. He was fascinated by the power and physical beauty of horses and depicted them often. Géricault himself was an avid rider and his paintings and drawings on this theme are characterized by vigor and movement. In this watercolor, he focused on a conflict, in which a groom struggles to separate a pair of fighting horses—a scene that appeared only a few times throughout his many interpretations of similar subjects. A sketchbook, now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, shows that the artist carefully st
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The Cleveland Museum of ArtFighting HorsesOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.