Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, ca. 1820 - ca. 1824

Around 1820 Théodore Géricault painted the Portrait of a Kleptomaniac. This painting was part of a series of ten portraits of people confined in a madhouse, five of which have been preserved. At the time the artist had befriended doctor Etienne-Jean Georget, who was a member of a group of enlightened medical practitioners, the so-called alienists. They no longer considered madness to be a divine punishment, but rather an illness or a disability, which needed to be treated. The alienists believed that the mad person’s physiognomy revealed his disability. They coined the term ‘monomania’ for a psychological disorder, which expressed itself as one well-defined obsession or one single illusion. They used every possible means in their research to represent expressions, such as casting moulds, busts, drawings and engravings. Géricault was undoubtedly influenced by them. His portraits reveal an almost scientific interest in mad people. An unusual feature for this era is the dignity that the artist tries to respect, while depicting the confined person and his Romantic empathy for the patient’s sick mind. Géricault’s fluent and suggestive style of painting in Portrait of a Kleptomaniac gives another perspective to the concept of ‘finished painting’, while adding new value to the work of art as a study.