Horse Attacked by a Lion

Around 1820 Gericault was in his late 20s, just past the storm his huge Raft of the Medusa had caused at the Salon, and he crossed to England, partly to get away and partly for the horses, which he loved above any other subject. The scene of a lion bringing down a horse was an old one. It came from an antique Roman marble on the Capitoline hill that artists had copied for centuries, and nearer to hand from the Englishman George Stubbs, who had built a whole series on the theme and whose prints Gericault knew and copied in Paris. Here he strips it to the two animals locked together, the lion dark and heavy in tone, the paint dragged on in loose, quick strokes that keep the struggle moving. He was a superb rider, and it was a riding fall a few years later that would kill him at 32.