Theodore Gericault, Painting Black Bodies Confrontations and Contradictions

This book examines Théodore Géricault’s images of black men, women and children who suffered slavery’s trans-Atlantic passage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including his 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa. The book focuses on Géricault’s depiction of black people, his approach towards slavery, and the voices that advanced or denigrated them. By turning to documents, essays and critiques, both before and after Waterloo (1815), and, most importantly, Géricault’s own oeuvre, this study explores the fetters of slavery that Gericault challenged—alongside a growing number of abolitionists—overtly or covertly. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, race and ethnic studies and students of modernism.

Introduction: Géricault Painting Black Bodies 1 Black Bodies 2 Prurient Bonds 3 Editing and Emendations 4 Parity 5 Fabricating Blacks 6 Deference and Decorum 7 Empathy 8 Quotidian Portraits 9 Epilogue

Albert Alhadeff is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Colorado Boulder.