Study of a Grey Horse

Géricault died in 1824, at 32, and the contents of his studio were dispersed soon afterwards. Horse studies in his manner kept circulating, and this canvas has carried his name for a long time. The museum in Béziers dates it to probably around 1830, six years after his death, and that is where the trouble starts. Germain Bazin rejected the attribution in his 1989 catalogue of Géricault's work. Philippe Grunchec had already disputed it in 1978 and again in 1991, finding nothing of Géricault's manner in it. Nobody has proposed another name, so the picture sits in the collection without one.

What is certain is the object itself. It is a study rather than a finished picture, oil on canvas, roughly 68 by 60 centimetres, a grey horse saddled and riderless against a bare dark ground, painted by someone who knew how a horse is put together. In 2024 it was lent to Versailles for a large exhibition about the horse.