This roundabout of energetic figure studies, while not directly connected to any one painting, may be counted among the hundreds of exercises Gericault performed in preparation for his grand memorial to shipwrecked sailors, The Raft of the Medusa (1819; Musée du Louvre, Paris). At the center of the sheet is a group of nudes apparently engaged in the rescue of a drowned man, while, on all sides, well-muscled men are wrestling or writhing, some strongly reminiscent of those by Michelangelo and Rubens.

From an engraving reproducing Rubens's painting The Fall of the Damned (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) Gericault copied several such figures, as did his friend Eugène Delacroix. Indeed, the middle figure along the left margin of this sheet lies in a posture quite close to that assumed by Delacroix when he modeled as a victim of the sea disaster for his friend's ambitious picture. Both artists liked to draw in pen and brown ink, a medium in which Gericault here displays astonishing fluidity and control.