Analysis Of Raft Of The Medusa

Raft of the Medusa

The piece of art known as the Raft of the Medusa was painted by Theodore Gericault during the years of 1818 and 1819. It is an oil painting. In the painting you can see a raft in the ocean with a bunch of people on it. The raft takes up a huge portion of the painting. Some of the people on the raft are waiving cloths around at what appears to be a ship off on the horizon, on the other hand, there are also people on the raft who appear to have died. The raft appears to have a sail which is mounted horizontally. There are also huge waves around the raft. There are dark clouds off to the right of the raft and there is light on the left of the raft. The painting presents a feeling of chaos and disaster. It does this by its use of light, color, light, shadows, and even space.

In regards to first impressions of the artwork, the viewer’s eve is first drawn to the large raft in the center of the painting. The focal point in the painting is the ship on the horizon. It is the focal point because most of the people on the raft that are alive are looking at the ship. The viewer’s eye is also drawn to the man holding onto a dead little boy due to the color

In the painting the skin tones of the people who are dead is drastically lighter than those of the people who are alive. It also uses color to show the darkness of the clouds which means that there was a storm and it uses lighter colors for the sky which means that the storm has passed. The painting uses color to draw your eye to the people waving their colorful clothes around. This in return draws your eye to the spec of color on the horizon which represents a ship. On the other hand, it also draws your eye to the man who is holding a little boy toward the back of the ship with the color of what appears to be a scarf on his head. In all this shows that color is used to help give the feeling of chaos and disaster in the