Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Race of the Riderless Horses at Rome, Study
Théodore Gericault French
Not on view
Gericault hoped to paint the Race of the Riderless Horses, a highlight of the Roman Carnival, on a scale that would rival the great battle pictures of the Napoleonic era. He produced numerous studies, but the project itself was abandoned, and it is difficult to know which of the preparatory works came closest to his ultimate vision. In this exceptional example he portrays the tumultuous start of the race (la mossa) in a modern vein; other related studies have ancient settings. Gericault died lamenting that he had brought few works to completion. Yet his contemporaries were strongly attracted to the more than two hundred paintings that became available at his posthumous atelier sale—many of them studies of an exploratory or preparatory nature. The growing appreciation for such works, independent of the existence of any finished related painting, was an important development in the history of taste in nineteenth-century France.
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