The Painted Indictment: Raft of the Medusa

This may be one of the most horrifying stories I've ever heard and I include the Holocaust in this because that was a planned, methodical murder carried out by madmen. This....this is almost inconceivable. It is an explosion of human nature at its worst, of ego, self-righteousness, and indifference. And the resulting grasping, clutching, murderous self-preservation; the madness, despair and agony left in its wake. That an artist would document the end result in a painting made to scale, the size of the actual raft that carried 147 people, in  all its grotesque and horrifying detail, would be as stunning as the event itself.


Here's how it happened:

In June of 1816, the French, no surprise the French are involved in yet another disgusting event in history,  sailed 4 ships to Africa to colonize Senegal what with Africa being in desperate need of civilization and all. I mean whatever it was they were doing had to be wrong, right?  Good God. 

It was a race with every country who had the money to build a ship to take over a continent that didn't need taking over and 175 years later, when Rwanda was destroying itself as a direct result of these bullshit invasions, no one would intervene .  They went to TAKE OVER because they were black then they WOULDN'T HELP because they were black.  The only thing worse is being a woman, said John and Yoko. 

But that's another story.  

In 1816, The Medusa, one of the 4 ships the French were lucky enough to even have after that whole Napoleon fiasco, was captained or whatever it is that ships are, by a rich, arrogant sonofabitch,  Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys, a long-retired sea asshole with political connections. Caring only about garnering accolades for beating the other ships to Africa and with no concern for the 400 passengers on board, he took off at full speed, went off course by 100 miles and hit a sand bar. Or something. They ran aground anyway. Oh. Look.  Here's the sea asshole now:

The other 3 ships were nowhere in sight having stayed the course. 

The Medusa was shipwrecked carrying 400 souls and a lifeboat that would only hold 250. Some of the crew chose to remain on the wrecked vessel and take their chances on a rescue. But not many. 

Now, the rich, naturally, were placed in the lifeboat with most of the rations and a makeshift "raft" was built, tethered to the lifeboat and loaded with 147 "lesser" passengers, the unimportant, people like me, who were told by de Chaumereys that they had "plenty of rations".

They had enough for 2 days and went through it in one. 

When the unrest began and the discarded human cargo of the raft realized what had been done to them, de Chaumreys cut the line. The comfortable, well-rationed lifeboat set them adrift: 146 men and one woman with no rations, on the open sea, at the equator. He simply cut the line and sent them to their deaths. 

Each night, madness set in. Complete darkness, the silence of the ocean becoming a deafening roar, hunger and dehydration taking over their senses.  Each morning there would be fewer.

Many were murdered by the others who were going insane from lack of food and water; and then there was fear so deep that many jumped into the sea in despair.  Eventually, the starving passengers resorted to cannibalism.

The one woman was repeatedly assaulted and thrown off the raft only to climb back in to the same fate.  Her torture is unknowable and it is said the half-corpse hanging off the side in the painting is her, rotted, half eaten, abused even in death.

Thirteen days later, The Argus, one of the 4 original ships, came upon the "Raft of the Medusa". On it were 15 living men and several rotting corpses - 10 survived. Of 147, only 10 survived and only 3 would live. The lifeboat, which was not filled to capacity, not even close, did not lose one passenger. 

Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys lost his stripes and was given three years which he never served. He was never convicted of desertion or any other crime. How he and the others who cut that raft loose lived with themselves is a testament to the worst elements of human character, elements nearly always born of a sense of entitlement which was a conscience-free existence in those days of very defined classism.

(self-portrait 1820)

But a painter by the name of Theodore Ge'ricault would interfere with their ability to deny the blood on their hands when -  only three years later - he exhibited a 16' x 23' painting called simply "Raft of The Medusa".  

 

Gericault was already breaking from convention with his series "Les Monomanes", portraits of the insane.  

But this was entirely something else. This wildly graphic  painting, a serious contribution to the dawn of the Romantic era, caused amazing controversy, shocked the world in its context, size and style... and pointed a finger squarely at de Chaumereys and the other Medusa lifeboat survivors. There would be no forgiveness now. History - perhaps not actively but most certainly - would hold them responsible by way of paint on a canvas. 

Many things happen this way.  Caravaggio's "confession" through his last work "Denial of St. Peter"  and I bring this up as it is thought Gericault studied the "Raising of Lazarus" for the cadaver reference, seen here.

Ge'ricault spent months studying cadavers, the varying stages of decomposition, interviewing the 3 survivors of The Raft, 2 in particular whose retelling (I have heard) is too difficult to bear.  The one woman on the raft suffered something to which no words could be assigned. 

(from his studies on cadavers)

The artist intended to shock with the truth, depicting the  horror of this event without restraint.  He went all in and did it to scale.  In total, the painting took two years to complete and the effort ruined his health, perhaps his faith who knows.  He died within a year of the work's completion.


It was repulsive to some, revolutionary to others but it was discussed, there was a fresh wave of anger over the entire thing.  Senegal was not so far that word did not reach those shadow-humans responsible for all of it.  Not one ever returned.  It was considered non-historical because of the short span of time between the event and the unveiling.  Contemporary it may be called but it would be considered authentic history at its worst.

"Le Monomanes"  showed he was a risk taker.  But with the "Raft of The Medusa" he became a groundbreaker both in the shift of truth in art and his clear strike at the upper class and the French government. 

To me, he accused de Chaumereys and the "entitled" on that lifeboat for all time and that seems more important than the rest. Were it not for Ge'reicault, I think time would have washed away the story of The Medusa, de Chaumereys and the indifferent upperclass of that lifeboat would have gotten a pass and those unfortunates sent to their deaths on that raft would mean as little today as they did the day they were placed on it.

This story is almost Dickensian, don't you think? Seldom do the gods wag their wicked fingers at 'the world's de Chaumereys' so swiftly and with such artistry,' as it were. It just doesn't happen like this: the size of this painting, the impact on artistic style,  the ripple effect it created that reached all peoples, mercilessly reminding them of the atrocity and stirring up a new fury.  And today, if you are reading this and learning for the first time, aren't you pissed off too?

Was this an artist who gave his life in the effort to tell the tale...is this divine justice?

If there is such a thing, this might be it.






Théodore Géricault by Horace Verte