Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers

In 1832-33, Delacroix was asked to visually document the Duc de Mornay’s diplomatic mission to Morocco, and he excitedly made hundreds of watercolors that provided him with wondrous Oriental themes for the rest of his life. In Morocco, Delacroix entered a world of exotic architecture, clothing, and landscape of intense light, and of unimaginably bright color in fabrics, tiles, and interior design that displayed a horror vacui (fear of empty spaces in art) rivaling his own. Delacroix’s palette became more colorful, as one can see in Women of Algiers, made in Paris in 1834 from studies. To enter the secluded world of a harem, Delacroix had to obtain special permission, and the mood of the painting captures the sultry, cloistered feeling of this sensual den. We can almost smell the aroma of incense, the fragrance of flowers, and the smoke from the hookah. Delacroix’s hues are as sensual as the subject. Color is dappled and contours are often not continuous or drawn but just materialize through the buildup of adjacent marks. A sea of paint and color covering the entire surface dissolves Neoclassical planarity and space. This technique began to free paint from what it was supposed to represent and established a platform for a new artistic style just over the horizon, Impressionism.^[1]