Étude de modèle

The sitter was a professional model known in Paris simply as Joseph, born in Saint-Domingue, the French Caribbean colony that became Haiti. He had worked as an acrobat in a travelling troupe before the studios found him, and through the 1810s and 1820s he was among the most sought-after models in the city. Gericault painted him about 1818 while preparing the enormous shipwreck canvas he showed the following year, and Joseph is usually identified as the figure standing at the top of the finished raft, waving. The shirt in this study is close to the ones the survivors were described as wearing. Slavery had been restored in the French colonies in 1802 and would not be abolished until 1848, and Joseph made his living in Paris in between, known well enough that the Ecole des Beaux-Arts hired him too.