突撃する帝国親衛隊猟騎兵将校

This is the first idea for the picture Gericault sent to the Salon that opened in Paris on the 1st of November 1812. He was 21, nobody knew his name, and he worked the full-size canvas up in a matter of weeks. The timing turned out badly. While the painting hung, the Grande Armee was struggling back out of Russia, and the bulletin that finally admitted the scale of the disaster was published in Paris in December. An officer of the Guard's mounted chasseurs charging on a rearing horse read rather differently after that. He was given a gold medal all the same. This sketch is oil on paper laid down on canvas, about half a metre high, and the speed of the brushwork is what people notice in it first. The large version was bought for the state at the sale of his studio after he died in 1824, aged 32.