Eugène Delacroix and Morocco: the journey that changed Orientalism

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)

Oil painting by DAMSSILI, Moroccan artist — Oil painting by DAMSSILI, inspired by the same Moroccan themes.

Eugène Delacroix, the leading French Romantic painter, visited Morocco in 1832 as a member of a diplomatic mission sent to Sultan Abd al-Rahman, and also stopped briefly in Algiers on the way back. He filled notebooks with watercolours and sketches of Tangier, Meknes and the people he met.

Back in Paris he kept drawing on them for the rest of his career. The Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834, Louvre) and later scenes such as The Sultan of Morocco Receiving the Count de Mornay (1845) come from that single journey. His handling of colour and light, learned in the Maghreb, influenced later painters, including the Impressionists.

Delacroix shows why Morocco has attracted painters for nearly two centuries: the light, the horsemen, the architecture and the ceremonial life of the court.

Today: A Moroccan painter today looks at the same subjects from the inside. In Fantasia, DAMSSILI paints the Tbourida riders as part of his own cultural heritage.