Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [196]
Discoveries (Harry N. Abrams). Originally published in France by Gallimard, these colorful paperbacks are a terrific value. They’re jammed with information, the quality of the reproductions is good, they’re lightweight and easy to pack (approximately five by seven inches), and the price is right. Discoveries books offer a fairly detailed overview and there are more than one hundred titles in the series, many devoted to French art and artists.
Masters of Art (Harry N. Abrams). The Masters of Art series, with more than fifty titles, is great for readers who want a little more than Discoveries but not huge coffee-table tomes. Not all titles are still in print, but copies are generally available online. Note generally that Abrams, an early leader in the publication and distribution of art and illustrated books, has a number of quite comprehensive and scholarly titles, and readers who are serious about particular artists should browse its complete title list online (abramsbooks.com).
Pegasus Library (Prestel). Pegasus books are mostly hardcover and all beautifully produced. They’re a little more scholarly than others and tend to have focused themes, such as Edgar Degas: Dancers and Nudes, Renoir: Paris and the Belle Époque, and Picasso’s World of Children.
The Raft of the Medusa
In the winter of 1818, the Romantic painter Théodore Géricault began work on a large canvas (about twenty-three feet wide and sixteen feet high) that depicted what had by then become a thorn in the side of Louis XVIII and what remains today one of the uglier events in French history. After Napoléon was defeated at Waterloo, the British offered the new French king the port of Saint-Louis, on the coast of Senegal, considered to be an important trading post. A fleet of four ships was readied to take the new French governor of Senegal, Julien Schmaltz, and others—settlers, scientists, and some soldiers who had previously fought for Napoléon—to the port. The ships were the Loire, the Argus, the Echo, and lastly the Medusa, which was filled with nearly four hundred men, women, and children, including Schmaltz. The man appointed to lead this flotilla, Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, had joined the English in the war against the revolutionaries in France and was awarded the post for his loyalty to the crown. He was, by all accounts, little prepared for this journey.
The Medusa proved to be the fastest ship, but it ran aground on July 2, 1816, on the Arguin Bank, off the coast of Senegal. Schmaltz suggested that they build lifeboats to transfer everyone to shore, but what transpired instead was that most of the “important” people were put on lifeboats, while almost everyone else (excepting those who elected to stay with the Medusa) was put on a crudely constructed raft. As the raft was so heavily overloaded and would overtake the lifeboats if it came close enough, De Chaumareys ordered that it be cut loose. What happened next was nothing short of a nightmare. “Horror after horror ensued,” Albert Alhadeff recounts in his excellent book The Raft of the Medusa: Géricault, Art, and Race (Prestel, 2002). “When they were rescued thirteen days later, the raft was littered with human flesh, limbs of their fellow mariners waiting to be devoured.”
Two survivors, Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, both of whom appear in Géricault’s painting next to the mast with the torn sail, wrote Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse, which was published in November 1817, followed by an English translation, A Voyage to Senegal. Géricault was riveted by the story. He compiled