''Insane Woman'' is an 1822 oil on canvas painting by

Théodore Géricault Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a French painter and lithographer, whose best-known painting is ''The Raft of the Medusa''. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic ...

in a series of work Géricault did on the

mentally ill A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

. It is housed in the

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon (french: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon) is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. Located near the Place des Terreaux, it is housed in a former Benedictine convent which was active during the 1 ...

, France. Mental aberration and irrational states of mind interested artists against Enlightenment rationality. Géricault, like many of his contemporaries, examined the influence of mental states on the human face and shared the belief, common in his time, that a face more accurately revealed character, especially in madness and at the moment of death. He made many studies of the inmates in hospitals and institutions for the criminally insane, and he studied the heads of guillotine victims. Géricault's ''Insane Woman'', her mouth tense, her eyes red-rimmed with suffering, is one of several portraits he made of the mentally ill. These portraits present the physical facts with authenticity, especially in contrast to earlier idealized commissioned portraiture.

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{{Gericault Paintings by Théodore Géricault 1822 paintings Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon