Attributed to Théodore Géricault

When Théodore Géricault died in Paris in January 1824, aged 32, his studio held far more sketches and studies than finished canvases, and its contents were sold at auction that November. Pupils and friends worked in his manner, and the art historian Henri Zerner once wrote that no body of work of its small size was so rife with problems of attribution.

Attributed to Géricault is the label a museum uses when it believes a work is his but cannot prove it. Germain Bazin, a former head of paintings at the Louvre, devoted seven volumes to everything by or ever attributed to him. A painting of a dying man at the Art Institute of Chicago shows how far a name can move. It was once catalogued as Géricault's own until cleaning revealed the signature of his friend Charles-Émile Champmartin, and research later identified the dying man as Géricault himself.