A record of incompetence.

Dynamic composition heightens impact.

The designers of the Titanic learned nothing from history. When the French naval frigate Médusa ran aground in 1816 off Mauritania there were insufficient lifeboats to save all on board. Those that were there were, naturally, reserved for the incompetent officers and scumbag politicians and the captain, hearing some faint echo of his duty to the others on board, ordered the ship’s carpenters to construct a crude raft, where the poor wretches were placed. The Titanic had a similar shortage of lifeboats but the miserable captain made no attempt to even cobble together alternative solutions.

The horrors of survival – cannibalism, dehydration, putrefaction, death – are all captured in this composition, one which no photograph could ever equal. The painter has managed to record death and despair in the lower half of the canvas, along with hope and optimism at the top.

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) completed this huge canvas in 1819 towards the end of his very short life and it remains an icon of French Romanticism. The painting is to life-size scale, and is 16 x 23 feet in size. It hangs in the Louvre in Paris, as it should. In a way it documents the failure of the 18th century Enlightenment which saw a growing focus on science and rational thought, rather than religious gobbledegook. Climate change and science denial, anyone? That failure echoes today in a purportedly rational, enlightened Western Hemisphere, with America the leader of the denial movement.

Gericault was seemingly magically gifted and remains one of the finest painters of horses. His portrait of Napoleon on a rearing stallion is maybe his most famous work but none exceeds the dynamism and sheer drama of The Raft.

There’s an interesting video explaining the work here which ends with a contemporary critic’s words: “We are all on the Raft of the Medusa”, a state in which America finds itself today, an imbecilic cockroach in charge with little empathy or caring for anyone but himself. As with the Titanic, history repeats.