Kehinde Wiley's Officer of the Hussars Reimagines Géricault

Kehinde Wiley's 2007 painting Officer of the Hussars, held at the Detroit Institute of Arts, reworks Théodore Géricault's The Charging Chasseur (1812, Louvre, Paris). Wiley, a Nigerian artist based in New York with studios in China and Senegal, replaces the white soldier with a confident Black man in casual attire—low-riding jeans, white tank top, Timberland shoes—on the same horse and leopard saddle. The background features a magenta sky with gold thistle stalks inspired by Rococo or Arts and Crafts, extending onto the sitter's purple jacket. Unlike Géricault's doomed chasseur, Wiley's subject looks directly at the viewer with confidence, challenging preconceptions about Black masculinity. Wiley typically paints ordinary people he meets, using Old Master compositions as a base. The fusion of classical references and African American models comments on Black individuals' exclusion from art history. The painting appeared in an office during the first season of Fox's Empire series.