In the early 1820s, in the gloomy aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the French Romantic painter Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) made five portraits of patients in an asylum or clinic. No depictions of madness before or since can compare with them for humanity, straightforwardness and immediacy. The portraits challenge us to find responses in ourselves to the face and the embodied mysteries of the other person, and to our own internal (unsconscious, disavowed) otherness: in this sense, Gericault was a "painter-analyst". The challenge could not be more urgent, in our world of suspicion of the stranger, and of the medicalisation of madness. The book sketches the history of this last process, from the Enlightenment through to the Revolution and its public health policies, to the birth of the asylum in its interface with the penal system. But there was also a new medico-philosophical conviction that the mad were never wholly mad, and their suffering and disturbance might best be addressed through relationship and speech.

'Five Portraits of the Insane' by the nineteenth century French artist Théodore Géricault are said to be all that remain of originally ten commissioned portraits of insane patients. Each painting depicts a particular mental condition, a so-called monomania including a kleptomaniac, a woman mad with envy, and a child kidnapper. Almost nothing is known about these portraits, but they raise a multitude of questions. Who are these people? In what way are they insane? What and where are the five missing madnesses? Intrigued and inspired by an absence, Tan decides to go in search of them. Pairing personal impressions with formal analysis and archival research, the essay ventures far beyond the boundaries of art history.

Theodore Gericault (1791 - 1824) was an influential French painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.Born in Rouen, France, Gericault was educated in the tradition of English sporting art by Carle Vernet and classical figure composition by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, a rigorous classicist who disapproved of his student's impulsive temperament while recognizing his talent. Gericault soon left the classroom, choosing to study at the Louvre, where from 1810 to 1815 he copied paintings by Rubens, Titian, Velazquez and Rembrandt.During this period at the Louvre he discovered a vitality he found lacking in the prevailing school of Neoclassicism. Much of his time was spent in Versailles, where he found the stables of the palace open to him, and where he gained his knowledge of the anatomy and action of horses.Gericault's first major work, The Charging Chasseur, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1812, revealed the influence of the style of Rubens and an interest in the depiction of contemporary subject matter. This youthful success, ambitious and monumental, was followed by a change in direction: for the next several years Gericault produced a series of small studies of horses and cavalrymen.He exhibited Wounded Cuirassier at the Salon in 1814, a work more labored and less well received. Gericault in a fit of disappointment entered the army and served for a time in the garrison of Versailles. In the nearly two years that followed the 1814 Salon, he also underwent a self-imposed study of figure construction and composition, all the while evidencing a personal predilection for drama and expressive force.A trip to Florence, Rome, and Naples (1816-17), prompted in part by the desire to flee from a romantic entanglement with his aunt, ignited a fascination with Michelangelo. Rome itself inspired the preparation of a monumental canvas, the Race of the Barberi Horses, a work of epic composition and abstracted theme that promised to be "entirely without parallel in its time". In the event, Gericault never completed the painting, and returned to France. In 1821, he painted The Derby of EpsomGericault continually returned to the military themes of his early paintings, and the series of lithographs he undertook on military subjects after his return from Italy are considered some of the earliest masterworks in that medium. Perhaps his most significant, and certainly most ambitious work, is The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819), which depicted the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck, Meduse, in which the captain had left the crew and passengers to die. The classical depiction of the figures and structure of the composition stand in contrast to the turbulence of the subject, so that the painting constitutes an important bridge between neo-classicism and romanticism. The painting ignited political controversy when first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819; it then traveled to England in 1820, accompanied by Gericault himself, where it received much praise. While in London, Gericault witnessed urban poverty, made drawings of his impressions, and published lithographs based on these observations which were free of sentimentality.After his return to France in 1821, Gericault was inspired to paint a series of ten portraits of the insane. There are five remaining portraits from the series, including Insane Woman.Gericault's last efforts were directed toward preliminary studies for several epic compositions, including the Opening of the Doors of the Spanish Inquisition and the African Slave Trade. The preparatory drawings suggest works of great ambition, but Gericault's waning health intervened. Weakened by riding accidents and chronic tubercular infection, he died in Paris in 1824 after a long period of suffering.