Delacroix's Voyage to Morocco
The Influence on Delacroix’s Art of his 1832 Voyage to Morocco
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) travelled to Morocco as part of a delegation led by the diplomat Count Charles of Mornay (1803-1878), who had been charged by Louis Philippe I (1773-1850), King of France from 1830 to 1848, to negotiate with Moulay Abd al-Rahman Ben Hicham (1778-1859), Sultan of Morocco from 1822, an improvement in relations between the two countries following the French invasion of Algeria in 1830.
Starting out late in 1831 and ending in June 1832, Delacroix spent six months in North Africa as a reportorial artist attached to a special diplomatic mission sent by the French government to the sultan of Morocco, Moulay Abd al-Rahman, to assuage his concerns over the French incursion in Algeria. (Although a Muslim state, Morocco did not come under Ottoman/Turkish domination but was governed by the hereditary Sharifian dynasty.) The establishment of France in North Africa created havoc in its external relations of Morocco. Eventually, the insurrection of Abdel el-Kader against the French, and especially the reception of the fugitive rebel in Moroccan territory, led to armed conflict between the Moroccan and French armies (1843-44) culminating with the French victory at Isly in August 1844. By the Treaty of Tangier and the Convention at Lalla Marnia that same year the sultan of Morocco agreed to withdraw his protection from Abdel el-Kader, who in 1847 surrendered to the French general La Morcière. Delacroix’s major pictures inspired by his mission bracket the period of France’s ascendance in this region and were all bought by the state and members of the royal family. (Boime 56-57)
Setting off from Toulon on 11 January on the corvette La Perle, Delacroix and the French delegation arrived in Tangier on 24 February 1832. On 5 March, they set off on horse for Meknès to meet the Sultan, arriving on 15 March and staying until 5 April, returning to Tangier on the 12 April. On 15 May, they set sail for Cadiz and then Seville, returning to Tangier on about the 1 June and leaving on 10 June. They then visited Oran and Algiers, arriving back in Toulon on 5 July (Arama 59-105). Delacroix recorded in notebooks details of the places and salient events to accompany the eight albums of sketches, drawings, and watercolours he made during the voyage, including one containing eighteen watercolours which he presented to the Count of Mornay. Three of these albums are held at the Louvre, with a number of the drawings and watercolours reproduced in volume two, Part IX, of Dessins d’Eugène Delacroix (1984) in Dessins Français du Musée du Louvre, published by Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, and edited by Maurice Sérullaz. The exhibition Delacroix in Morocco was held at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris from 27 September 1994 to 15 January 1995, with a catalogue conceived by Brahim Alaoui; the first since the temporary exhibition Delacroix’s trip to Morocco (1832) and a retrospective of the Orientalist painter, M. Auguste Chassériau (1819-1856) at the Musée de l’Orangerie in 1933.
Delacroix’s journey to North Africa in 1832 was arguably the most single important even[t] in his life in terms of the influence it had on his art. Unlike the more classically inclined masters of his age, David, Ingres, Corot, he never spent a formative period in Rome, in fact was never to visit Italy; and unlike them he had established a formidable reputation with four major Salon paintings and a number of official commissions before undertaking the journey, which was to prove as significant for his development as the Roman sojourn had been for these other artists. … Apart from imaginary hunt scenes, (about fifteen in all) and mural paintings with Moroccan motifs, he found time to paint approximately eighty pictures with North African themes, including such famous masterpieces as the Women of Algiers (fig. 1), the Jewish Wedding (see p. 68) and the Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage (cat. No. 84), shown at the Salons of 1834, 1841, and 1845 respectively. Between 1834 and 1859 he sent fourteen more to the Salons, three of which were rejected by the jury. Two of his last paintings were of Moroccan subjects - An Arab Camp at Night (see p.89) and Arabs Skirmishing in the Mountains (fig. 6), both dated 1863. He also, of course, produced countless works on paper – drawings, watercolours, pastels – many of the highly finished pieces that rank in quality with the smaller easel paintings and on occasion surpass them in sensitivity or richness of colour. (Johnson, “The Influence of the Journey on Delacroix’s Art” 114)
The Moroccan voyage trip had a significant impact on Delacroix’s watercolour technique. In View of Tangier (1832) he employs the white of the paper to delineate the buildings and countryside in a technique similar to Paul Cézanne “in certain views of L’Estaque” (Sérulaz 160) or in Ferme sur la route de Tholonet (1885-1890) and Cabane de Chasse en Provence (1890).
In his journal, Delacroix attributed the success of his Moroccan works to his rejection of realism.
When Courbet painted the background to the Woman Bathing, he copied it meticulously from a study which I saw beside his easel. Nothing is colder; it is a work of marquetry. I only began to achieve something worthwhile, during my voyage in Africa, at the moment when I sufficiently forgot the small details in my paintings to remember only the striking and poetic aspect; until then, I was driven by love of exactitude, which most people take for the truth. (Delacroix, Journal 17 October 1853, my trans.)
Delacroix would refer to the notes in his Moroccan journal, often many years later, as inspiration for some of his most significant works. Through his guide and interpreter Abraham Benchimol, member of an influential Jewish family in Tangier, Delacroix enjoyed close interaction with the Jewish community.
His encounter with the minority Jewish population (the dhimmi or protected minority) in Morocco proved decisive for his future work. His notebooks and correspondence of the period show that he was most at home in the mellahs of Tangier and Meknes, participating in or observing Jewish customs and festivals, and visiting the apartments of the friends and relatives of his guide and interpreter, the dragoman Abraham Benchimol. (Boime 60)
In the Noce Juive au Maroc (Jewish Wedding) (1837-41), submitted to the Salon in 1841, Delacroix made extensive use of his Moroccan notes and sketches.
[Tuesday, 21 February]
21 February, Tuesday. The Jewish wedding. Moors and Jews at the entrance. The two musicians. The violinist, thumb in air, the hand, the bow, the underside of the other hand in shadow, bright behind. The haick on his head, transparent in places. White sleeves, the violinist’s dark at the back. Sitting on his heels, and the djellaba. Black between the two of them low down. The guitar case on the player’s lap. Very dark near the belt, red vest, brown ornaments. Blue behind, around the neck. Projected shadow from the left arm that comes in front, on the haick on his lap. Shirt sleeves rolled up, revealing his biceps. Green woodwork alongside. Vein on his neck, short nose. (Delacroix, Journey to the Maghreb 75-76)
Boime elaborates on the painting’s structure:
The sexualised space of the seraglio is transformed into the ritualized space of the wedding, although the wall of separation between the sexes is maintained as is the sexual politics of patriarchy. The work is vivaciously centered by the triangulated male presence of the seated scribe at the right (a stand-in for the artist), the robust standing figure at the left who oversees the women’s section and the turbaned male leaning against the wait [sic] in the corner behind the musicians. (76)
In the article Une Noce Juive dans le Maroc, published in Le Magasin pittoresque in January 1842,[1] Delacroix recalls after an elapse of ten years the wedding in great detail.
Delacroix described the gender separation during the festivities in the courtyard of the house of the bride’s parents, specifying that the Jewish women squat on one side in their festive costume with an elevated headdress of starched fabric atop a turban, while on the opposite side one can find “Moors of distinction, seated or standing, whose presence honoured the wedding occasion.” The specifically “Jewish” side of the division is also reinforced by the presence of the rabbi who dreamily contemplates the moment in the shadows of the Moorish archway. Delacroix emphasized that only the women do the dancing, as the men must maintain their dignity; and the sensuous dancing performed by the women would be considered in “terrible taste” by Europeans (Delacroix Oeuvres littéraires 1: 104-05). (Boime 77)
Delacroix used the notes and sketches from the reception of the French delegation by the Sultan in Meknes for his painting The Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage.
[Meknes, Thursday 22 March]
22 March, Thursday. Audience with the emperor. … After waiting a bit, went on and got to a great square where we were to see the king. [sketch] Before his arrival, we heard: Ammar Seidna! Long live our Lord (that is, God). From the plain, unimposing gate [drawn] above, there first appeared, little detachments of eight to ten black soldiers in pointed caps who lined up left and right. Then two men carrying lances. Then the king, who came forward and stopped very near to us. Looks a lot like Louis-Philippe, but younger. Thick beard, more or less brown. Burnous fine and almost closed at the front. Haick over it on the upper part of his chest and almost entirely covering his thighs and legs. Strings of white beads with blue silk around his right arm that could hardly be seen. Silver stirrups. Yellow slippers, not closed in at the back. Harness and saddle of a rose-color and gold. Gray horse, mane cur short. Parasol with an unpainted wooden handle; a little gold ball at the end. Red above and in sections; underneath red and green. (Delacroix, Journey 95-96)
The Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage was presented at the 1845 Salon to critical success. ‘‘’This painting is so harmonious, despite the splendour of the tones’, exclaims Baudelaire, ‘that it seems grey like nature, grey like the atmosphere in summer-time when the sun spreads its twilight of shimmering dust over each object’’’ (Sérullaz 212). In his funeral eulogy in 1863, Baudelaire stressed the influence of orientalism on Delacroix’s work as a colourist.
I entreat you to observe that the general colouring of Delacroix’s paintings is informed by the colouring specific to that of oriental landscapes and interiors; and it produces an effect similar to that experienced in those intertropical countries where a vast diffusion of light produces for a sensitive eye, in spite of the intensity of local tones, an overall effect which is almost that of twilight. (Baudelaire 837, my trans.)
Baudelaire then turned to the influence of orientalism on Delacroix’s attitude to women.
But already long before his passing, he had excluded women from his life. As a Muslim, he would perhaps not have driven them from the mosque, but he was astonished to see them enter, not understanding what sort of conversation they could have with Allah. On this subject, like on many others, the oriental conception vigorously and despotically dominated him. He considered women as an object of art, delicious and conducive to arousing the mind, but an object of art that disobeys and disturbs, if you surrender to her the threshold to your heart, voraciously devouring time and energy. (841, my trans.)
Delacroix provided a surprisingly modern analysis of the strengths of Moroccan culture compared to the impasse into which he felt western civilisation had ended.
Tangier, 28 April, note in the Meknes notebook]
Yesterday, 27th April, a procession with music, drums and oboes passed under our window. It was a young boy who had finished primary school and was being paraded about in celebration. He was surrounded by his friends who were singing, and by his relatives and teachers. People came out of the shops and houses to congratulate him. He was wrapped in a burnous, etc. … Certain age-old, ordinary customs have a majesty that we lack in the most serious circumstances. The women’s practice of going on Fridays to visit the tombs with branches sold in the market, the betrothals with music and presents carried behind the parents - the couscous, the sacks of wheat on mules and donkeys, an ox, fabrics piled on cushions, etc. They must have a hard time understanding the confused mind of Christians and the anxiety that make us so susceptible to everything new. We notice a thousand things that these people lack. Their obliviousness to them accounts for their tranquillity and their happiness. Are we ourselves close to exhausting what a more advanced civilisation can produce? They are closer to nature in a thousand way: their clothes, the shape of their shoes. Thus, beauty enters into everything they do. In our corsets, our narrow shoes, our ridiculous girdles, we are a pitiful sight. Their beauty takes revenge on our know-how. (Journey 111-12)
Boime notes Delacroix’s attraction to the simplicity of Orientalism.
Rather than overthrow it, Delacroix wanted to modernize classicism by infusing it with life and energy. Orientalism carried the same significance for Western males as classicism in presenting a primitive culture that functioned optimally as unconstrained actors in the real world. Delacroix was forever drawing comparisons between the simple costumes and noble bearing of non-Jewish North Africans and the constraining clothes and conventions of the French bourgeoisie. His imaginative exuberance constituted the escape hatch by which he could identify with his aristocratic models. Since he saw himself as an eyewitness to a living version of antiquity, he had figuratively to slip into the burnouses and haiks with the immediacy of his techniques and brilliant color. Hence the realism of romanticism was officially permissible when incarnated in exotic guise, here signifying that which escapes the regulations and conventions of bourgeois culture and serves as the site for the expression of otherwise repressed desires. (75)
Delacroix’s brief but influential voyage in Morocco at the age of thirty-four revealed to him a world of vibrant local customs and vivid personalities set against the sun-drenched Moroccan landscapes which he would remember and use as inspiration in his subsequent artistic works. Of tolerant and inquisitive character, Delacroix was receptive to the attractions of a people markedly different in their temperament and customs from the commercial and conservative spirit that then predominated in France following the “bourgeois” revolution of 1830 during the reign of Louis Phillipe (1830-1848).[2] This spirit of adventure enabled Delacroix to take maximum advantage of his Moroccan voyage.
Works Cited
Arama, Maurice. “The Journey.” Delacroix in Morocco, translated by Tamara Blondel, Flammarion, 1994, pp.56-110.
Baudelaire, Charles. “L’Œuvre et la Vie d’Eugène Delacroix.” Œuvres Complètes, Robert Laffont, 1980, pp. 827-43.
Boime, Albert. “Delacroix’s Invitation to the Jewish Wedding in Morocco.” Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures, edited by Joan DelPlato and Julie Codell, Routledge, 2016, pp. 55-82.
Delacroix, Eugène. Delacroix Introduction and notes by André Joubin, Librairie Plon, 1981.
---. Journey to the Maghreb and Anadulusia, 1832: The Travel Notebooks and Other Writings. Translated by Michèle Hannoosh, Pennsylvania UP, 2019.
Johnson, Lee. “The Influence of the Journey on Delacroix’s Art.” Delacroix in Morocco, Flammarion, 1994, pp. 112-25.
Sérulaz, Arlette. “Catalogue.” Delacroix in Morocco, translated by Tamara Blondel, Flammarion, 1994, pp. 136-231.
[1] A translation of this article by Michèle Hannoosh is in Journey to the Maghreb and Anadulusia, pp. 56-59. The book also contains a translation by Hannoosh of an unfinished article “Memories of a Visit to Morocco” by Delacroix dating from circa. 1843, pp. 24-55 (see for dating of manuscript Appendix B, pp. 163-69)
[2] See: Gruner, Shirley. “The Revolution of July 1830 and the Expression 'Bourgeoisie'.” The Historical Journal, vol. 11, no. 3, 1968, pp. 462–471. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2638163.
I loved this piece. It happens that I was last week at the Louvre to watch the renovation of the women in Algiers and spent about one hour watching the piece. Then we researched to understand who were these women (Jewish or Muslims). Then there was a whole show on Arte (french German TV channel) about Delacroix in Morocco and then your paper .... Next week we go back to le Louvre to explore the "carnets"... Thanks a lot