GÉRICAULT, Théodore
(b. 1791, Rouen, d. 1824, Paris)

The Wreck

1821-24
Oil on canvas, 19 x 25 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

"Fate painting" displaced the older religious forms in the 19th century. Artists depicted man helpless at the mercy of forces of nature, either as a group, in images of horror and despair, or as individuals, as here, cast up senseless on a beach by a storm.