Studies of soldiers on horseback (recto); Studies of a head, a leg, and the feet of a standing warrior holding a shield (verso)

This sketch by the young Gericault, who entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1811, is reminiscent of the numerous studies after the antique that cover the pages of the so-called Zoubaloff Album at the Louvre (inv. RF 6072). Once in the collection of the prominent painter and collector Léon Bonnat, the drawing is the lower part of a larger sheet cut into three pieces. The other two were bequeathed by Bonnat to the museum in Bayonne that bears his name (inv. NI 709, NI710). The two latter drawings are based on prints in Bernard de Montfaucon’s Antiquité expliquée, published in Paris in 1719, and represent the sacrifice of a bull and a goat and a bull dressed for the sacrifice, and a woman on horseback and a gladiator. Put together, the versos of the three sheets depict a Greek warrior, drawn in pen and wash. Before Bonnat, the drawing belonged to Louis-Joseph Auguste Coutan and his wife Lucienne Hauguet, who also owned the Zoubaloff Abum; later, it ended up in the hands of the painter and illustrious collector of Gericault’s works, Pierre Olivier Dubaut.