Theodore Gericault's portraits of the insane: Art, psychiatry and the politics of philanthropy.

Abstract

My dissertation critically analyzes the series of five extant portraits of the insane (c. 1819-24) painted by the early nineteenth-century French artist Theodore Gericault. I show how the portraits participate in the formation of the developing diagnostic category of insanity--monomania--and in the advances made by post-Revolutionary period French psychiatry. The Viardot letter (1863) provides the documentary basis for the identifications of the paintings as representations of subjects with specific monomanias, and for the date and context of their production--their link to Dr. E.-J. Georget. My reading of this letter argues for the probable reliability of the diagnostic categories identifying the works, while linking their production more directly to Dr. J.-E.-D. Esquirol, Georget's teacher. In addition, I provide new evidence for positioning both doctors in the liberal political camp to which Gericault belonged. Through a comparison of Gericault's images with contemporary works by Horace Vernet and G.-F.-M. Gabriel produced from the live model in the asylum, I show how Gericault's paintings reside in a space between the categories of medical illustration and high art portraiture. And for the first time, I demonstrate how three of the paintings employ allegorical and symbolic references. I also examine the paintings within the broad context of Gericault's commitment to Restoration-period political liberalism, which positioned itself in opposition to Ultra-Royalists in the government through policies of philanthropic reform. I demonstrate the importance of the anti-Ultra-Royalist organization the Societe de la Morale chretienne (Society for Christian Morality) in analyzing Gericault's alliance with both anti-Bourbon Liberals and progressive psychiatrists. I suggest that the paintings may have originally been done in association with Dr. Esquirol, who, as I show for the first time, was a member of the Societe. I indicate how this contextual frame also supports the claim for a winter 1822-23 dating for the portraits: the Societe's involvement in both the asylum reform movement and the campaign to abolish gambling. Using the portrait of the gambling-monomaniac as a case study, I demonstrate the validity of this psychiatric-political reading. My analysis of the painting in relation to the anti-gambling discourse of the Societe situates the work at a historically specific conjuncture of psychiatry and politics.