O Forno de Gesso

The man who painted the enormous, doomed Raft of the Medusa made this small, bleak thing near the end of his short life. It is a plaster kiln on the edge of Montmartre, then a hill of gypsum quarries feeding the constant building of Paris. Gericault actually had money in an artificial-stone business, so this grubby industrial yard touched on his own trade. There is no heroism in it, just tired horses, a cart, heaps of raw material and a low smoking kiln under a grey sky. He gave the ordinary scene the same steady seriousness he had given shipwreck and battle. Gericault died in 1824, only 32, worn down after a fall from a horse; the painting sold cheaply at the sale of what he left behind.