Un cheval effrayé par l'éclair

Around 1813 and 1814 the empire Géricault had grown up under was coming apart, and its cavalry with it. He had made his name at the Salon of 1812 with a mounted officer charging into smoke; here there is no rider and no battle, only a single horse caught in the open at night. Lightning has just flared, and the animal has frozen in profile rather than reared, ears back, the whole body listening. Géricault treated it the way George Stubbs had painted Whistlejacket, as the portrait of one particular horse with its own markings, not a type. He built the wet sheen of the dappled coat out of short quick strokes, so the grey lights up for an instant against a sky that is almost black.