Study for the Raft of the Medusa

This is the second sketch Géricault painted on canvas for the Raft of the Medusa, in 1818, larger than the first and further along. The pile of bodies now rises towards a man standing on a barrel with his arm raised, the arrangement the final picture keeps. Several of the figures are still only pale outlines brushed over a light ground, waiting for colour, while the sail and the waves around them are fully painted. After the sale of his studio in 1824 the sketch eventually reached the painter and collector Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, who gave his collection to the French state in 1906, the same gift that brought Manet's Luncheon on the Grass to the Louvre. He made it a condition that the works were never to be lent, and Room 950 is given over to the Romantic pictures from his collection.