The Charging Chasseur

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The Charging Chasseur, also known as An Officer of the Imperial Horse Guards Charging, is a painting by Théodore Géricault made around 1812. It shows a Napoleonic cavalry officer on a horse, ready to charge into battle. The work is oil on canvas and measures 349 cm by 266 cm (137 in by 105 in). It was first shown at the Salon in 1812 and again in 1814. Today it hangs in the Louvre in Paris (Room 700, Denon wing, Level 1).

This was Géricault’s first exhibited painting. He aimed to capture both movement and structure in one image. The piece is part of French Romanticism. It nods to Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps, but it breaks from classical style with its dramatic diagonal composition and vigorous brushwork. In the painting, the horse seems to rear away from an unseen attacker.

The rider’s pose on the rearing horse is inspired by Rubens’ Saint George (Prado, 1605–1607), though Rubens shows the view from the side. Géricault would keep moving away from classicism, as seen later in The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19).

The Charging Chasseur also inspired later artists, including American Kehinde Wiley, who reimagined it in 2007 as Officer of the Hussars. In Wiley’s version, a young Black man in a sleeveless shirt, jeans, and Timberland boots sits on the horse.