Swiss Sentry at the Louvre
Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824)
1819
- Medium
- Lithograph on ivory wove paper (discolored to cream)
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 39.7 × 33 cm (15 11/16 × 13 in.); Sheet: 49.1 × 38.7 cm (19 3/8 × 15 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Print and Drawing Fund; The Joseph Brooks Fair Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Spanning the rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire, Théodore Géricault’s career culminated during the fractious period of the French Restoration. Though dimmed by brief and disenchanting military service (1815) and the disappointments of the Napoleonic era, he found in lithography an appropriate match for his awareness of the politics of contemporary France. While crossing the Tuileries gardens outside of the Musée du Louvre, a peg-legged French veteran at left confronts a sentry of the Swiss Royal Guard. When the Swiss officer moves to take up his musket, the veteran exposes the Napoleonic cross pinned to his chest, beneath his coat. Despite old age and handicap, the Napoleonic soldier gives a gesture of defiance, thus communicating patriotic pride during a postempiric period. This gesture meets with cheering from Bonapartist observers in the background.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
