Theodore Gericault, Painting Black Bodies: Confrontations and Contradictions

This book examines Théodore Géricaults images of black men, women and children who suffered slaverys trans-Atlantic passage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including his 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa.

The book focuses on Géricaults depiction of black people, his approach towards slavery, and the voices that advanced or denigrated them. By turning to documents, essays and critiques, both before and after Waterloo (1815), and, most importantly, Géricaults own oeuvre, this study explores the fetters of slavery that Gericault challengedalongside a growing number of abolitionistsovertly or covertly.

This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, race and ethnic studies and students of modernism.