Joseph (art model)

Joseph's family name has not been recorded, although it is believed that he was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti, around 1793.[2] He arrived in France in or around 1804 and first settled in Marseille. By 1808, Joseph had moved to Paris where he was hired as an acrobat and actor for Madame Saqui's troupe.[3][4] Joseph was one of the many immigrants who had left Haiti in the aftermath of the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the French colonies (which lasted from 1794 until 1804 when it was legalized again by Napoleon). A 2023 digital exhibition by the J. Paul Getty Museum suggests that he lived in the 9th or 17th arrondissement like many other immigrants and those involved in the arts, including Laure, a Black female model who worked with Édouard Manet.[2]

Annotated version of The Raft of the Medusa (1819) by Théodore Géricault, showing figures said to have been modeled by Joseph.

Joseph gained recognition after serving as a principal model for Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, an 1818–1819 painting depicting a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on 2 July 1816.[5] Joseph, whom Géricault had first encountered during an acrobatic show, was hired as a model shortly after the artist began working on The Raft of the Medusa in 1818.[Note 1][2] According to some accounts, only one of the fifteen survivors on the raft, a soldier named Jean Charles, was Black.[Note 2] Several art historians and critics have argued, however, that Géricault included three Black individuals in the composition. All are said to have been modeled after Joseph.[6][7]

Most notably, Joseph served as a model for the man assumed to be Jean Charles, waving a dark red handkerchief in hopes of being noticed by the passing ship.[7] Influenced by an ancient Greek Classical sculpture titled Belvedere Torso and with his back turned toward the viewer, Joseph's silhouette is placed atop the pyramidal grouping of survivors in the composition's right half.[8] During the same time, Géricault completed a study of the model's back.

Théodore Géricault, Back study (after the Joseph model) for "Le Radeau de La Méduse" 1818–1819, Ingres Museum, Montauban

Belvedere Torso, fragment of a Neo-Attic sculpture from the 1st century CE, which is said to have served as an inspiration for Géricault's depiction of Joseph. Vatican Museums, Vatican City.

The artist also incorporated a small rendering of Joseph's face in the composition. Looking at the viewer, he is flanked by two white men placed to the right of the wooden mast.[2][8] Around the same time Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa, the artist also completed a portrait study of Joseph, dressed in military uniform, in a manner consistent with tête d'étude, or a head study, an established tradition in the French studio practice wherein a portrait of an individual is painted for possible use in large-scale compositions.[2][9] In doing so, the painter represents the subject "with a directness and immediacy that is often lacking in formal portraiture".[10]

Joseph has been described as Géricault's favorite model and the artist is said to have admired him as an individual, a sentiment art historians suggest is reflected in the deeply personal approach to the 1818–1819 portrait.[11][12] When discussing the study, the British artist and writer Peter Brathwaite emphasizes Géricault's attention to detail in portraying a person of color and suggests that the viewer is invited into the "world of an actual, distinct person".[13] Moreover, it has been suggested that Joseph served as inspiration for a third individual included in The Raft of the Medusa, a man seen seated in the middle of composition directly in front of the mast.[6][2]

Géricault identified as an abolitionist and his decision to include representations of Black people in The Raft of the Medusa has been interpreted as a political statement against slavery and French colonialism.[8][14] Art historian Albert Alhadef, pointing to "strong antipathy" towards people of color among the general French public during the early 19th century, called the artist's inclusion of Black individuals in the painting an "extraordinary burst of fearless independence".[15] Surviving accounts indicate that the decision was controversial. An Italian art model known as Cadamour, who also posed for The Raft of the Medusa, was allegedly "scandalized" that Géricault had decided to hire a Black model.[1]

Art historians Klaus Berger and Diane Chalmers Johnson note that Géricault made the individual modeled on Joseph the "focal point of the drama, the strongest and most perceptive of the survivors, in a sense the 'hero of the scene'".[16] They argue that the artist's choice to do so was not a "last-minute" decision as evidenced by early sketches for the work, including the portrait study, and point to Géricault's concerns regarding the "extreme cruelties" of illegal slave trade in the French colonies.[16] Echoing this sentiment, the Congolese writer and artist Bona Mangangu describes Joseph's Black body as "powerful, in good health, rising above the white bodies, survivors of the raft weakened by disease and fatigue".[14][Note 3] According to Come Fabre, a curator at the Louvre, Paris where Géricault's painting is on permanent display, the artist "wanted to show the equality of man when facing terror and death".[17]

Théodore Chassériau, Study for Negro, oil on canvas, c. 1836, Musée Ingres Bourdelle

Abel de Pujol, Saint Philip Baptizing the Eunuch of the Queen of Ethiopia, oil on canvas, 1848, Musée des beaux-arts de Valenciennes

Adolphe Brune, Joseph, le nègre, oil on canvas, 1865, Musée de Cahors Henri-Martin

In 1832, Joseph was hired at l'École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, becoming one of only three male models.[3] He held the position until at least 1835.[18][19] When discussing Joseph's career, scholar Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen notes that in 19th-century France "body of a life model functioned as a floating signifier, assuming different meanings when inserted into different compositional contexts" and in the case of Joseph, it was almost always conditioned by the cultural connotations Europeans "attached to his skin pigment".[20]

In an 1836 study ordered by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the painter Théodore Chassériau shows Joseph floating against the sky and next to two small hand studies. At the time of its completion, Butterfield-Rosen says, neither the model nor the artist (who was a grandson of a Haitian landowner of mixed race)[19] was made aware that Ingres had planned to use Joseph in a religious composition Christ Expelling Satan from the Holy Mountain and depict him as "the devil cast down from the mountaintop".[20][19] In a painting by Abel de Pujol completed in 1848 and drawing upon a Biblical subject matter, Joseph is depicted as a eunuch of the Queen of Ethiopia being baptized by Saint Philip.[20]

Joseph went on to pose for other prominent French artists, including Horace Vernet, Alfred de Dreux, and Adolphe Brune. Surviving records indicate that he was primarily admired for his physique, which contemporary artists perceived as impressive and visually attractive. An article from the French newspaper Le Figaro published in 1858 described Joseph as "the most beautiful model who ran the ateliers of Paris" and said that there was not a single French "artist, painter or sculptor who does not know Joseph".[3][Note 4]

At the same time, Alhadeff suggests that surviving contemporary accounts of Joseph—including a derogatory 1840 passage by the French writer Émile de La Bédollière where the model is portrayed as a "clown who can barely sit still" and reduced to a "familiar caricature"—point to the continued perception of Black people as that of an inferior race.[15][Note 5] Despite his success in the art circles of Paris, Joseph was not broadly recognized and, similarly to other people of color, continued to face systemic racism in France even after slavery had finally been abolished in 1848.[14] Bona Mangangu further explains that art modeling was considered a "vile profession" ("vil métier") which usually paid an average of three Francs per each session, a relatively small amount.[14]

Among the late surviving depictions of Joseph is a painting by Brune, likely painted during the 1840s, which was exhibited at the 1865 academic salon in Paris.[Note 6] In this composition, Joseph is seen with his torso exposed, seated against a natural backdrop and holding a porcelain cup while smiling. According to scholar Jean Nayrolles, Brune's late composition continues to perpetuate racial stereotypes through the subject's "anthropological gaze" ("le regard anthropologique"), associating the Black body with the state of "benevolent" ("bienveillante") nature and sexuality.[21]

Toward the end of his life and career, Joseph worked at the studio of the Swiss artist Charles Gleyre with whom he had become friends while living in Paris.[3] His exact death date is unknown, although it is estimated he died sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s.[22]