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Study of a Nude Male with a Rearing Horse (recto); Recumbent Male Figure (verso)
Study of a Nude Male with a Rearing Horse (recto); Recumbent Male Figure (verso)

Study of a Nude Male with a Rearing Horse (recto); Recumbent Male Figure (verso)

Artist Théodore Géricault (French, 1791 - 1824)
Dateca. 1817
MediumBrown ink on paper (recto); Graphite on paper (verso)
DimensionsUnframed: 10 1/2 x 7 5/8 inches (26.67 x 19.38 cm)
Framed: 18 1/2 x 16 x 1 3/4 inches (46.99 x 40.64 x 4.45 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number38-31 A,B
On View
Not on view
Collections
Exhibition History

Exposition Géricault, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, April 24-May 16, 1924; Musée de Rouen, no. 108. No cat.

La Jeunesse des Romantiques, Maison Victor Hugo, Paris, May 18-June 30, 1927, no. 1292, as Étude pour l’homme nu vu de dos. Dessin à la plume.

Exposition Géricault, peintre et dessinateur, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, May 10-29, 1937, no. 110, as Etude [sic] pour l’homme nu, vu de dos, au milieu de la composition.

Gros-Géricault-Delacroix, Knoedler and Company, New York, November 21-December 10, 1938, no. 36, as Study of a Nude Man Holding a Horse.

French Painting from David to Courbet, Detroit Institute of Arts, February 1-March 5, 1950, no. 29.

Loan Exhibition of Old Master Dawings from Midwestern Museums, Detroit Institute of Arts, June 1-September 15, 1950, no. 16, as Study of a Nude Man.

The Nineteenth Century: 125 Master Drawings, University of Minnesota Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, March 26-April 23, 1962; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 15-July 1, 1962, no. 47.

The Nude in Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, November 3-29, 1964, no. 58.

The Academic Tradition, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN, June 19-August 11, 1968, no. 57.

Géricault, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, October 12-December 12, 1971; Detroit Institute of Arts, January 23-March 7, 1972; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, March 30-May 14, 1972, no. 45, as Study of a Nude Man Holding a Rearing Horse.

Theodore Gericault (1791–1824): an exhibition, paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints and sculpture, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, April 7–May 23, 1987, no. 29.


Géricault (1791-1824), California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, January 28-March 26, 1989, no. 19, as Study of a Nude Man Holding a Rearing Horse.


Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Kansas City, Missouri, Washington University Gallery of Art, September 22-December 3, 1989, unnumbered, as Study of a Male Nude with a Rearing Horse.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 63, as Study of a Nude Male Holding a Rearing Horse (recto), Recumbent Male Figure (verso).

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, unnumbered, as Study of a Nude Male Holding a Rearing Horse (recto), Recumbent Male Figure (verso).

The Naked and the Nude: Representations of the Body, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 17, 2013-February 23, 2014, unnumbered, as Study of a Nude Male with a Rearing Horse (recto).

Gallery Label
Géricault’s visit to Rome in 1817 inspired a project for an enormous life-size canvas to be called The Race of the Barberi Horses, a stampede of riderless horses around the city’s central thoroughfare. The painting was never completed, but Géricault did produce a large number of compositional drawings and painted studies including this work that was probably drawn from the live model. Here, a muscular nude man struggles to control a more sketchily rendered rearing horse. His right arm is raised as though striking the horse while his left hand rests on its haunches. The treatment of the nude draws on antique sculptural models that Géricault could have seen in Rome.
Provenance

Martial François Marcille (1790-1856), Orléans and Paris;

Dessins…de M. Marcille sale, Defer, Paris, March 4, 1857, lot 84;

Henri Michel-Lévy (1844-1914), Paris;

Tableaux anciens par F. Boucher, Brauwer, Chardin, Hallé, Jordaens, La Fosse (de), Pater, A. Wateau, tableaux modernes par Bonington, Eug. Delacroix, aquarelles, dessins, pastels par F. Boucher, Caresme, Chardin, Clodion, Desfriches, Deshays, H. Fragonard, Géricault, Gillot, Greuze, Guardi, Hallé, J.-B. Huet, Lancret, Leprince, Oudry, Perronneau, Pierre Prud'hon, Hubert Robert, G.-D. Tiepolo, A. Watteau, sculptures par D'Antoine, Carpeaux, Houdon, etc. composant la collection H. Michel-Lévy sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, March 12-13, 1919, lot 86, as Homme retenant un cheval;

Édouard-Napoléon-César-Edmond Mortier de Trévise (1883-1946), Duc de Trévise, Paris, by 1938;

Purchased from his sale, Collection de Duc de Trévise, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Paris, May 19, 1938, lot 7, as Etude [sic] pour un des Entraîneurs de la Course de Chevaux libres, through Rebert Lebel, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1938.

Published References

Catalogue des Tableaux anciens par F. Boucher, Brauwer, Chardin, Hallé, Jordaens, La Fosse (de), Pater, A. Wateau, tableaux modernes par Bonington, Eug. Delacroix, aquarelles, dessins, pastels par F. Boucher, Caresme, Chardin, Clodion, Desfriches, Deshays, H. Fragonard, Géricault, Gillot, Greuze, Guardi, Hallé, J.-B. Huet, Lancret, Leprince, Oudry, Perronneau, Pierre Prud'hon, Hubert Robert, G.-D. Tiepolo, A. Watteau, sculptures par D'Antoine, Carpeaux, Houdon, etc. composant la collection H. Michel-Lévy (Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, March 12-13, 1919), 63, as Homme retenant un cheval.

La Jeunesse des Romantiques, exh. cat. (Paris: Maison Victor Hugo, 1927), 71, (repro.), as Étude pour l’homme nu vu de dos. Dessin à la plume.

Pierre Dubaut, Exposition Géricault, peintre et dessinateur, exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, 1937), unpaginated, (repro.), as Etude [sic] pour l’homme nu, vu de dos, au milieu de la composition.

Alexander Watt, “Notes from Paris,” Apollo 27, no. 163 (July 1938): 32, 34, (repro.), as Etude [sic] pour un des entraineurs de la Course de Chevaux Libres.

Collection de Duc de Trévise: Catalogue des tableaux et dessins du XIXme siècle…œuvres importantes de Géricault (Paris: Galerie Jean Charpentier, May 19, 1938), 12, (repro.), as Etude [sic] pour un des Entraîneurs de la Course de Chevaux libres.

Gros-Géricault-Delacroix, exh. cat. (New York: Knoedler and Company, 1938), 30, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Man Holding a Horse.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 101, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Man.

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 126, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Man.

Paul L. Grigaut, French Painting from David to Courbet, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1950), 21, (repro.).

John S. Newberry, Loan Exhibition of Old Master Drawings from Midwestern Museums, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1950), unpaginated, as Study of a Nude Man.

Regina Shoolman and Charles E. Slatkin, Six Centuries of French Master Drawings in America (New York: Oxford University, 1950), 128, (repro.).

The Nineteenth Century: 125 Master Drawings, exh. cat. (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1962), unpaginated, (repro.).

The Nude in Art, exh. cat. (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1964), unpaginated, (repro.).

The Academic Tradition, exh. cat. (Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Art Museum, 1968), 24, (repro.).

Lorenz Eitner, Géricault, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971), 85, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Man Holding a Rearing Horse.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 188, (repro.), as Study of A Nude Man.

Lorenz Eitner, Géricault, His Life and Work (London: Orbis, 1983), 131, (repro.), as Study of a Man Holding a Horse.

Lorenz Eitner and Steven A. Nash, Géricault (1791-1824), exh. cat. (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1989), 51, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Man Holding a Rearing Horse.

Roger Ward and Mark S. Weil, Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Kansas City, Missouri, exh. cat. (St. Louis, MO; Washington University Gallery of Art, 1989), 7, 50, (repro.), as Study of a Male Nude with a Rearing Horse.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 199, (repro.), as Study of A Male Nude with a Rearing Horse.

Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 11, 196-99, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Male Holding a Rearing Horse (recto), Recumbent Male Figure (verso).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008) 111, (repro.), as Study of a Nude Male Holding a Rearing Horse.

 

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