France was a colonial power from the early seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The first French colonial empire was based primarily in the New World, but it also included areas in the West Indies and West Africa. A series of colonial conflicts between France and Great Britain during the mid-eighteenth century resulted in the demise of most of the first French colonial empire.

When Jean-Paul Flandrin painted Study of an African's Head, French colonial activity in Africa was primarily centered in Senegal, but it expanded to North Africa as the French invaded Algeria in 1830. This invasion is often considered the beginning of the second French colonial empire. At its peak between 1919 and 1939, French colonies extended over 4,767,000 square miles of land and included territories in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the South Pacific.

On the map to the left, areas in light blue represent colonies from the first French empire, and areas in dark blue represent colonies from the second French empire. Crosshatched areas mark spheres of French influence, rather than possession.

In this painted study of an African man, the artist does not merely record the sitter's features: he has frozen a moment of intense but contained reaction to something outside the frame, implying narrative potential even within the small format. This effect might suggest that the painting was a sketch for a complex narrative painting. Academic artists, however, who were trained to render coolly precise likenesses of living models and ancient sculpture, often created independent character studies as well.

This work shares the exactitude of the academic approach with a smoldering, emotional quality typical of French romantic painting, a style that emphasized subjectivity. We do not know the identity or geographic origin of the sitter; however, because of France's long colonial history in Africa, there were many Africans in France.