The epic painting The Raft of the Medusa features a gruesome mass of figures afloat at sea, some dead, some struggling for life, in a tangled mass positioned on a crudely-made raft. The only African figure on the raft waves a cloth at the top of a pile of a few men who are struggling to get the attention of a ship in the distance (located on the far right of the horizon line). The sail of the raft is billowing in the wind while being tossed about a choppy ocean beneath a stormy sky. Géricault paid great attention to the details in this work. He even sketched severed body parts in order to make the image as authentic as possible.

The subject depicted is the artist's dramatic interpretation of the events beginning on July 2, 1816, when a French navy frigate crashed on its way to colonies in West Africa. The appointed governor of the colony and the top-ranking officers in the party left on the ship's six lifeboats leaving the remaining 147 passengers to be crowded onto a hastily made raft. When the raft proved too cumbersome, in a horrific act of cowardice and fear, the ship's leader cut the ropes to the raft. Left to fend for themselves for 13 days, the passengers eventually resorted to cannibalism. When rescued by a passing British ship, only 15 men were left alive, of whom 5 died before they were able to reach land. When the public learned of this, it became an international tragedy and a searing indictment of the current French government.

The decision to paint a scene from contemporary history - one that was utterly of the moment - brought instant attention to this work, particularly as Gericault translated it in a manner befitting classical history painting (large-scale, with heroic and tragic elements). The painting shocked the public and divided critics at the 1819 Salon. The shipwreck had scandalous political implications at home—the incompetent captain, who had gained the position because of connections to the Bourbon Restoration government, fought to save himself and senior officers while leaving the lower ranks to die—and so Géricault’s picture of the raft and its inhabitants was greeted with hostility by the government. Critics were divided: the horror and "terribilità" of the subject exercised fascination, but devotees of classicism expressed their distaste for what they described as a "pile of corpses," whose realism they considered a far cry from the "ideal beauty" incarnated by Girodet's Pygmalion and Galatea (1819) which triumphed the same year. Géricault's work expressed a paradox: how could a hideous subject be translated into a powerful painting, how could the painter reconcile art and reality? Coupin (art critic of the Revue encyclopédique) was categorical: "Monsieur Géricault seems mistaken. The goal of painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel."

Disappointed by the reception of The Raft of the Medusa, Géricault took the painting to England in 1820, where it was received as a sensational success. He remained there for two years, enjoying the equine culture and producing a body of lithographs, watercolors, and oils of jockeys and horses.

This work is a key example of Romantic painting. In creating it, Géricault showed a complexity of composition and an almost unsettling portrayal of reality, differed from anything that had been seen before. Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830) borrows heavily from the style and composition while contemporary artists, including Frank Stella, Peter Saul, and Jeff Koons, have taken direct inspiration from this work, which has achieved the status of an artistic icon.