Le Cheval du Plâtrier

This 1822 work on paper — Le Cheval du Plâtrier, the plasterer's horse — held in a Normandy collection, represents Géricault's engagement with working horses in urban or trade contexts rather than the aristocratic racehorses or military chargers that dominate his more famous equestrian subjects. The plasterer's horse was a working draft animal pulling heavy loads through city streets, an unglamorous creature whose honest labor made no claim to the prestige of the thoroughbred or the cavalry mount. Géricault's interest in such subjects reflects his democratic approach to the horse as a subject: he was genuinely interested in the full range of equine types, from the sublime to the mundane, and he brought the same observational intensity to a street horse as to a racing stallion. The 1822 date places this in the final years of his life, during his London period and its aftermath.

Working on paper in 1822, Géricault would have used rapid, responsive mark-making suited to capturing the working horse in motion or at rest in a street environment. The draft horse's anatomy differs markedly from the thoroughbred's — broader, heavier, with a different musculature profile that demands its own pictorial convention.