Thesis Prospectus- Women of Algiers

Figure 1. Moroccan Notebook: Studies of Jewish Women. Pencil and watercolor. Musée Conde, Chantilly (fol. 26v-27r).

Figure 2. Jewish Wedding in Morocco, 1837/41. Oil on Canvas, 1.05 X 1.40 m. Louvre, Paris.

Figure 3. Abduction of Rebecca, 1846.

Oil on Canvas, 100 X 82 c. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Figure 4. Women of Algiers in their Apartment, 1834.

Exhibited at the Salon of 1834. Oil on Canvas, 1.80 x 2.29 m. Louvre, Paris.

Figure 5a. Arab Woman Seated on Cushions, 1832? Probably executed during the stay in Algiers. Watercolor and pencil on paper, 10.7 X 13.8 cm. Musée du Louvre, Department des Arts Graphics, Paris.

Figure 5b. Two Seated Arab Women, 1832? Probably executed during the stay in Algiers. Watercolor and pencil on paper, 10.7 X 13.8 cm. Musée du Louvre, Department des Arts Graphics, Paris.

Figure 6. Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, 1847-49. Exhibited in the Salon of 1849. Oil on canvas, 84 X 111 cm. Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

September 15, 2009

Prospectus - Qualifying Paper

University of St. Thomas, Master of Arts in Art History

Paige Dansinger

Identity of “the Jewess” in Delacroix’s Orientalist Painting: Women of Algiers in their Apartment

Introduction

‘Que m'importe, juive adorée, un sein d'ébène, vermeil devant l'onu! Tu n'es point blanche ni cuivrée,

mais il semble qu'on t'a dorée. Avec un rayon de soleil.”

“What matters, adored Jewess, an ebony breast, a ruddy face! You are not white nor copper, But rather it appears that you have been covered with gold. With a ray of sunshine.” -----Victor Hugo, Les Sultane Favorite.

The subject of my research is Jewish feminine identity portrayed in Eugene Delacroix’s painting, Women of Algiers in their Apartment. The ultimate mission of this research is to decipher the Jewish visual and cultural content inherent in this specific work, in the context of nineteenth century French Orientalist art.

French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix

accompanied Count Charles de Mornay

from January 1832 to June 1832 on a mission dispatched by Louise-Philippe to the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay al-Rahman.

The six month mission influenced the artist’s work for the duration of his life.

Delacroix was appointed to record the events, people, typography, visual information and intelligence in Tangier that would benefit France.

Tangier, is a rocky citadel in Northern Morocco, across the Strait of Gibraltar.

The town was the center of all transactions between “the impenetrable kingdom and the infidel nations.”

“I just arrived in Tangier. I have rushed through the town . . .” wrote Delacroix, “We landed in the midst of the strangest crowd of people . . . One would need to have twenty arms and forty-eight hours a day to give any tolerable impression of it at all.”

He recorded hundreds of notes and sketches taken in his journals, which became source material for later paintings (figure 1).

The most accessible models were beautiful Jewish women, whom the artist encountered in the home of his Jewish host and his host’s relatives, as well as other ‘belle juives,’ or beautiful Jewesses, in the Jewish quarter, called the mellah, and within the markets and streets of Tangier.

Delacroix wrote, “The Jewish Women are admirable. I fear that it will be difficult to do anything other than to paint them: they are pearls of Eden.”

Using documentary Realism, the artist painted and sketched Jewish women throughout his journey. However, near the end of his travels in North-Africa, Delacroix had finally obtained access to a Muslim household.

Delacroix spent time in Algiers from 25 to 28 June, 1832, during which time he sketched a Muslim harem.

It was against Muslim law to permit a Christian male into a Muslim household if women were present.

The evidence of his visit is indirect, based on secondhand accounts of the testimony of Victor Poirel, a civil engineer working for the Port Authority of Algiers, who boasted of having facilitated Delacroix’s harem visit.

It was reported that the owner of the harem was a former ‘corsair,’ a designation supported by Mornay’s recollection of the same man as a ‘renegade”

There are also Muslim names on the back of the paintings, indicating that Delacroix had penetrated into the forbidden harem that he had long desired.

Harem dwellers were often kidnapped by foreign invaders and may have belonged to diverse ethnic, national and religious cultures, including Christian, Jewish and Muslim women who were given new identities in the harem. This may have been the case with two sisters Delacroix sketched for the Women of Algiers.

Primary sources, including selected artist’s works, sketches, journal notes, exhibitions and Salon reviews, will aid in the analysis of this work by using Stylistic and Feminist methodologies.

Romantic literature, including Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales, art historian and other scholar’s texts will offer secondary sources to enrich the understanding of Jewish women’s identity in Woman of Algiers.

This research is important in the discourse of art history in establishing how Jewish feminine identity has influenced French art during the period of Romanticism in Orientalist paintings, Jewish studies and nineteenth century feminine identity. The content of this research is vital to the enrichment of our understanding of identity in Morocco for Jewish women, as depicted in this work, and offer information about the perception of Jewish women by men in France during the nineteenth century.

This research will identify issues, such as dominance, hierarchy and eroticism while exploring Women of Algiers.

The Problem

Delcaroix’s journals were a rich source of material for paintings of mostly Jewish women. Upon return from Morocco, Delacroix regularly exhibited paintings at the French Salon clearly depicting Jewish life, including Jewish Wedding in Morocco, painted in 1837 and exhibited in 1841 (figure 2).

However, Delacroix commonly fused Jewish and Muslim cultures in the same image and in the model’s identity who is being portrayed.

This signifies that Europeans possibly modified the identity of Delacroix’s works to accommodate the private or public audience. Identity seemed permeable, temporary and insignificant during nineteenth century European culture.

Discrepancies found in Delacroix’s paintings and the model’s identity presents conflicts which may be considered limitations in better understanding of Jewish feminine identity in Delacroix’s works.

But it was at the Salon of 1834, that Delacroix became renowned as an Orientalist painter by exhibiting Woman of Algiers in their Apartment, which represents three seated women and their dark-skinned servant supposedly in the interior of a harem.

It was this work that defined his identity during his artistic career and became an influential painting to other painters such as the Impressionists and Picasso, who did a fifteen canvas series inspired by this work.

By penetrating the Jewish visual and cultural identity inherent in Woman of Algiers, I wish to contribute to the art-historical discourse on the topic of culture of Jewish women in colonized North-Africa and the perception of women by men in France at this time. Questions which concern this research in comprehending Jewish women’s identity in Women of Algiers in their Apartment are:

1. Why was Women of Algiers in their Apartment the painting that defined Delacroix as an Orientalist painter, rather than Jewish Wedding in Morocco, and are there other factors which promoted the popularity of Women of Algiers in their Apartment?
2. Through a chronological investigation of Delacroix’s works, is there evidence of evolution of his perceptions and depictions of Jewish women within the painting’s historical context? Did critical responses at Salons and other exhibitions also evolve over time?
3. How were social, political and sexual issues of dominance and control inherent in this work, as seen in feminine, racial and class systems.

The procedures I will follow to gain better comprehension of Delacroix’s Jewish women’s identity as presented in the Women of Algiers in their Apartment, may be best fulfilled for this research by using the methodology of stylistic and feminist analysis. This research will explore visual and textual evidence, as well as scholarship in the context of Delacroix’s journals and paintings of Jewish women, Salon reviews relating to exhibition of works, as well as contemporary literature and scholarship on French Orientalism. I will continue to work in this direction with the goal of answering the questions that have been presented.

Literature Review

Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815-1848, by Albert Boime (2004), offers new scholarship on Delacroix’s Moroccan journey, focusing on Delacroix’s encounters and attitudes towards Jewish women by examining the works and journals of Delacroix, as well as new findings in scholarship. Boime continues his focus on the Jewish identity of Women of Algiers, and offers document, comparisons and evidence related to the theme of identity in this work. Further discussion on the influence of this work and others on Orientalist art and literature, including a discussion of Dumas, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, Salon reviews, Thoré, Conservative Right and Leftist political groups attitudes and art critics. Consideration was presented of other Orientalist painters such as Decamps and the works and influence of Gleyre, as well as Couture, Delaroche, Gerome, Ingres and other artists.

Boime then relates all of these sources to Louise-Phillip’s July Monarchy and the French political, social and personal desires of the nineteenth century. Boime surveys ethnographic realism and Neo-Greek Classicism, as well as Delacroix’s notes on his perceptions of Algeria becoming the “new Rome.”

He continues his discussion with an examination of Delacroix’s Jewish Wedding in Morocco, scrutinizing the Jewish and Muslim relationships in this work and offers analysis of Women of Algiers in their Apartment and Jewish Wedding in Morocco.

He concludes with an examination of a later work, The Abduction of Rebecca, which illustrates Sir Walter Scott’s, 1819 novel, Ivanhoe, (figure. 3). The theme of the Jewish female victim relates with the works from Delacroix’s Moroccan series.

Tamara Blondel’s translation of Delacroix in Morocco, (1994) shares primary visual source material, titles, description of works, as well as biographical and exhibition records of Delacroix’s journey. His works are discussed in the context of Orientalist paintings and the artist’s experience in North Africa. This experience was defined by the details of Mornay’s mission, Delacroix’s journey, the influence of the journey on Delacroix’s art. An exhibition chronology is defined by portfolios, journals, sketches and watercolors created in Morocco, as well as major works created for the Paris Salon. Reviews, critical analysis, artist writings, exhibition descriptions and scholarship, including provenance records contribute a biographical understanding of Delacroix’s expedition.

Concerning the model’s Jewish identity, Barthelemy Jobert’s Delacroix (1998), informs us that Delacroix was able to paint Muslim women as models when he returned to France. He also made preparatory sketches using a European model and the clothing and documents brought back from Africa.

However, Marie Lathers in, Posing the "Belle Juive": Jewish Models in 19th-Century Paris (2000) argues that the most accessible artist models in France during this time in history were Jewish women.

Regardless that this work was originally derived by sketches done in in the harem, the exact identity if the model is likely to be a fusion of many sensory details and memories transformed in his imagination. Along with a detailed visual analysis of the painting, Jobert offers Salon and critical review, as well as artist’s statements.

Both, Jobert and Lee Johnson’s Delacroix (1986), compare this work to a second version of this work, as well as related sketches, (figures 4a, b and figure 5).

Lynne Thornton’s book, Women as Portrayed in Orientalist Painting (1994), illuminates the role of women in Orientalist paintings.

Thornton provides extensive historical analysis of women’s identity within the works, as well as notes from female and male travelers. This analysis presents information about practices common for women living in harems, slaves or as brides in a domestic sphere. This information aids in making distinctions between sexualized images created specifically for a male gaze and images depicting private and public domestic rituals.

Packed with images that seem to encompass most major aspects of women’s identity, Thornton’s book has been a valuable entry into the domain of women in Orientalist paintings.

Other literature sources which offer valuable research material about women’s identity in nineteenth century Orientalist paintings are, Reina Lewis’s Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation,

and Madeline Dobie’s Foreign Bodies: Gender, Language, and Culture in French Orientalism.

Lewis’s scholarship regards Orientalization by the British, including a literary discussion of George Eliot’s Orientalism of Jews in Daniel Deronda. This offers a more broad understanding of Eurocentric Orientalization, anti-Semitism and its effects in art, literature and culture.

A valuable text is Orientalism and the Jews, edited by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (2005).

Included are essays about Jews in colonial discourse, the Jewish historical gaze, Zionist revisionism between Eastern and Western cultures, Orientalism and national art, representations of Mizrahi Jews, and the imaging of Jewish bodies in contemporary multicultural literature. This text will prove seminal in my research on the Jewish perspective and response to Orientalism.

Although some texts are not directly about Delacroix’s works of Jewish women in Morocco, or Women of Algiers, they lend contextual evidence of the influence of Orientalism on women’s identity, race, language and culture and will help provide sources and supporting evidence in answering questions about Women of Algiers. I will continue to refine and provide additional textual sources and analysis as my research of Delacroix’s Jewish women’s identity culminates into further refinement. Delacroix’s personal motto was, “Start by sketching large, with a broom if necessary . . . finish with a needle.”

Expected Outcomes

I expect conclusive outcomes to better understanding Jewish feminine identity in Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, by using stylistic and feminist methodological approaches to analyze this work. The themes concerning these outcomes will convey class, status, anti-Semitism, eroticism, social and political hierarchy and binaries of Eurocentric supremacy and Oriental “otherness,” as well as male dominance and female victimization.

Some expected outcomes will encompass better comprehension of Jewish women’s identity, represented in Women of Algiers. Other assumed results focus on the Jewish identity of the models used in Algiers and France. I presume that these figures are good examples that represent Jewish women’s identity in the context of French Orientalist paintings. Boime explains visual evidence supports that there are many Jewish elements in the painting, Women of Algiers in their Apartment.

I will survey related works to look for additional visual evidence that confirms the Jewish elements, women’s status, evidence of evolution, as well as hierarchy within the harem as portrayed in these works. I will anticipate that this research will reveal the identity of Delacroix’s Jewesses, are steeped in the binary of male dominance and female submission.

Most scholars have perceived that the owner of the harem was a Christian. However, the Muslim port employee that let Delacroix into his home was a former ‘corsair,’ or renegade. One French translation of ‘corsair’ is ‘shark, Jew’ and renegade, which may mean convert.

On Delacroix’s sketch of Woman of Algiers, the recorded names were, Mouni and Zohra Bensoltane, written by Delacroix as Mouney ben Sultane.

Restoration of the name to its Sephardic origin reinstates Jewish identity, as Bensoltane was a common Jewish North-African name.

The household Delacroix visited were probably Jews who converted to Islam to escape pariah status. This is an important detail, because many Jews converted during the Inquisition of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from Spain an Portugal, from Jews to New-Christians (Moranos), to North-Africa, then often from New-Christians to Muslims. Northern-African Jews were subject to severe dominance and degradation, conversion was often the response.

Comparisons of Women of Algiers to Delacroix’s works, including the second version of the painting, as well as Jewish Wedding of Morocco and Abduction of Rebecca will provide visual evidence that will measure any evolution that occurs in the depiction of Delacroix’s Jewish women’s identity in Orientalist paintings.

Another expected outcome is that Salon reviews and publications will reveal evidence that provides more textual evidence which supports a hierarchical attitude by Europeans when they view Delacroix’s works.

In the selected works, the woman portrays both subject and object.

The Jewesses transform into a symbol depicting the “French rape of Algeria.”

The female victim was one of the most oppressed groups in European and North-African society, but the Jewish woman is an even more oppressed victim. In this research, Jewish victimhood is predominant in Delacroix’s paintings. The binary of dominant foe and helpless victim is present in all the discussed related works, in metaphorical manifestations of Orientalization. The artist represented his Eurocentric attitude and class structure, “fantasies of masculinist domination and female submission” and the painter of France’s need to express it’s colonial dominance in symbolic terms.

Comparisons of these works also provide visual and textual evidence that may lead to clues about stylistic shifts between documentary Realism and Romantic eroticism. This research will reveal to stylistic shifts in each work from romantic exoticism to realistic genre as a response that explores the theme of forbidden space and ritualized domain. Using a fusion of both styles may be one factor why Woman of Algiers defined Delacroix’s as an Orientalist. This expands on previous research by Boime and others by examining the work within the focus of Jewish feminine identity, analyzing evolution in the artist’s perspective of Jewish women, examining the role that dominance penetrated his works, and exploring reasons why Women of Algiers became a defining painting in Delacroix’s career.

At the conclusion of this research, I expect to have deeper insight on the identity of Jewish women in Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in their Apartments, as well as grasp why this work became a definitive work for Delacroix. This analysis will expose any evolution of the artist’s perceptions of Jewish identity. This research will explore themes related to feminine and male binaries. As a result, with the culmination of the evidence offered in the is research, I will have a deeper understanding of Jewish women’s identity as a subject of dominance and victimization, represented in Women of Algiers and French Orientalist paintings.

Notes

1Victor Hugo, Les Sultane Favorite. http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/victor_hugo/la_sultane_favorite.html. Translation mine 9/7/09.

² Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) had preceded the works from his Moroccan journey with an Orientalized painting, Death of Sardanapalus, 1827. This earlier work was one of “imaginary projection” as opposed to the Moroccan works which focused on “documentary realism,” the style of Orientalism; which Delacroix identified with nationalism. (See Boime, 352.)

³ Mornay had been acquainted with Delacroix prior to the journey through mutual friends, including the actress Mademoiselle Mars and Louis-Marie-Armand Bertin and was also backed by the Journal des dèbats for his selection to accompany the mission. Delacroix was also under the political protection of Theirs, a champion of North African colonization. (See Boime, 353.)

⁴ During the French July Monarchy, the objective of this mission to the sultan, Moulay Abd as-Rahman, was to pacify his concerns over the French colonial penetration in Algeria. At the time of Delacroix’s mission to Morocco, France’s ambitions were to ensure Moroccan neutrality in the Franco-Algerian conflict. (For further discussion see Boime, 353.)

⁵ Delacroix’s major works inspired by this mission framed the period of France’s ascendancy of Algeria and were all bought by the state and members of the royal family. (See Boime, 352.)

⁶ Ibid., 353.

⁷ Tamara Blondel, Trans. Delacroix in Morocco. France: Institut du Monde Arabe and Flammarion, 1994., 60. Tangier, at one time supported a Phoenician, Cathaginian and Roman trading center, as well as the site of the legendary Columns of Hercules.

⁸ Blondel, 64. Also see Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York: Random House, 1978.

⁹ Blondel, 64. With permission, translations of extracts from Delacroix’s letters, by Blondel, have been originally taken by Stewart, 1971. Extracts from Delacroix’s Journal are taken from Wellington, 1980. Simultaneously, Delacroix also notes that going out in the open in Meknes bothers him as he finds himself surrounded by a crowd and concludes, “It takes every ounce of my curiosity to brave the crap thrown at me by that rabble.” (Boime, 355.) Mornay’s European bias against the Arabs, Moors and Jews set the tone for the delegation. (For further discussion see Boime, 353 and Blondel, 65.) Boime states, Delacroix’s notebooks “. . . attest to an obsession with race and ethnicity as well as to the contradictory attitudes of the conservative European on tour who selectively idealizes and demeans aspects of the indigenous culture . . . [he] perceived them mainly as a fresh repertoire of subjects . . .” Delacroix perceived they were, “the stuff of high art.” (Boime, 353. Blondel, 70.)

¹⁰ Ibid., 70. Boime sites an example of Delacroix’s study of Sidi Ettayeb Biaz, the customs office (admin) in Tangier. Mornay’s message to Paris includes, “As wily as a Moor can be . . . His excessive love of money has sometimes conflicted with his religious principles . . .” Mornay’s Eurocentric prejudice is felt regardless that Jews, “active as intermediaries in Moroccan commerce and trade, were not permitted to collect customs.” Delacroix’s watercolor of Biaz is stereotypical of the “Shylockian miser and moneylender, especially of the shrunken, vulturine type . . .popularized in Balzac’s Comédie humaine.” (For further discussion see Boime, 354.)

¹¹ Ibid, Delacroix accompanied Mornay to Morocco at his own financial expense and had been a guest during his journey at the house of a Jew, Abraham Benchimol, the dragoman to the French consulate. Benchimol’s family had unusual status in Morocco. Jews represented a small fragment of Moroccan society. They were partially tolerated and not required to convert to Islam, however they lived under non-Muslim pariah status. Confined to living in the degradation of the mellah, Jews had to observe prohibitive laws. They were forbidden to wear shoes in public, (as seen in Delacroix’s sketches of Benchimol’s meeting with the sultan), especially on a street which held a mosque or other Muslim shrine; they had to wear distinctive black garments, yield to Muslims in public, and were banned from riding horses, (Benchimol traveled by mule). High taxes and ritual physical abuse were the norm, unfortunately Benchimol could not protect his family and relatives from their inferior status despite the appointment as dragoman for the consulate for successive generations. Delacroix stayed with Benchimol and his brothers Jacob, Isaac, David and Haim, and with their sister Guimol Azencot, mother of David, the auxiliary dragoman. During Delacroix’s stay, he painted portraits of Leditia, Abraham’s niece, and drew his wife Saada and his daughters, Preciada and Rachel. On Tuesday 21 February, one of the events that Delacroix was witness to and recorded, was the celebration of a Jewish wedding of Benchimol’s daughter Preciada. (Blondel, 71, Boime, 356.) Abraham Benchimol, appointed consulate dragoman in 1820 after the death of his brother in-law and father Moses, who served as interpreter for the consulate general of France from 1800- 1813, when Abraham succeeded him as dragoman. (Boime, 356). His duties as interpreter was considered prestigious and offered an advantage in aiding in trade with countries which they assisted. In charge of purchases, money-lending, organizing mules, houses, servants, arranging gifts and audiences, the Jewish dragoman, for Mornay, was a constant source of dissatisfaction. Only at the end of the envoy, Mornay recognized ,” I have nothing but praise for the zeal of poor Abraham, whom I regularly inconvenienced, often unjustly.” (See Blondel, 70.) A recent unpublished manuscript discovered by Michelle Hannoosh revels Delacroix’s attitude towards Jews. He devotes long sections to the Jewish community, discussing their subjection in Morocco, their Sabbath customs, and has much to say about women’s costumes. He describes the “humiliations of pretty Jewish women obliged to remove their slippers . . . he turns it into an eroticized description of their bare feet. The women carry their small red slippers (mules) exposing their charming feet . . . that nature bestowed on Venus.” Delacroix’s foot fetish revels itself in an environment where sex is taboo except in bordellos. (Boime, 356.)

¹² Albert Boime. Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815-1848. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 355.

Written to Pierret on 25 January, 1832. (See Boime, 355.)

¹³ Ibid., 360. Delacroix enjoyed the privilege of a European on tour, as a foreign flaneur, able to revel in the spectacle of local custom while remaining free of social or political obligations. See, Stuart Hall and Paul du Gray. Ed., Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1996., 26.

¹⁴ Ibid., 360.

¹⁵ Ibid., 360. “Charles Cournault, was a close friend of Delacroix’s and formerly lived in Algiers who became curator of the Musée Lorrain at Nancy, claimed to have learned it from Poirel that a clerk and occasional bailiff working under him agreed to allow Delacroix secretly into his harem.”

¹⁶ Boime discusses the condition of Delacroix’s ability to gain access to a Muslim household. The Muslim port employee that let Delacroix into his home was a former ‘corsair,’ or renegade. One French translation of ‘corsair’ is ‘shark, Jew’ and renegade may mean convert. (Boime, 361.)

¹⁷ Ibid., 361. Lambert’s study of the work notes names on the back. (See Boime, 361.)

¹⁸ Ibid., 361.

¹⁹ Delacroix observed the details in his journal of the Jewish community and his Jewish hosts, whose lives “were marked by social events and gestures derived from the most ancient customs . . .” (Blondel, 70. Boime, 354.) Biome sites, “Delacroix’s notebooks abound in ethnic references and racial distinctions. Jews, Moors and Africans are all seen as one-dimensional picturesque motifs . . . Women are often framed by garret windows or dark passages” And, “occasionally a causal remark hints at the standard sexist and racist attitudes of the period. At a Jewish wedding festival, the women . . . line up one above the other “like flower pots” (26 February).” (For more discussion see Boime, 354.)

²⁰ Aware of Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales, Delacroix’s urges are magnified by Hugo’s erotic writings centered on abducted Christian females, sexualized violence and the harem, including the poem “La Sultane Favorite,” of which the jealous desires of the “belle juive” (beautiful Jewess) in the harem demands the elimination of her rivals. Delacroix’s European fantasy comes to life in the streets of the Jewish ghetto. His engagements with the Moroccan Jews were significantly influential in his future work. (Boime, 355.) What matters, adored Jewess, an ebony breast, a ruddy face! You are not white nor copper, But rather it appears that you have been covered with gold. With a ray of sunshine.” Victor Hugo, Les Sultane Favorite. http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/victor_hugo/la_sultane_favorite.html. Translation mine, 9/7/09.

²¹ According to Boime, the reduction of the individuals to identifiable external characteristics and costume details, “is to see the person as a coded object in an already existing text.” Delacroix, who like other artists of the Orientalist period, travelled for short periods and could not become sufficiently knowledgeable with its different cultures to depict them from the inside. Boime adds, that Delacroix’s preconceived image of the Jewish culture is “subjective of a suppressed minority, but from a codified projection of an unfamiliar culture.” (Boime, 358, 361.)

²² Delacroix’s notes conveyed his comprehension of figures in this environment are understood by a Eurocentric perspective. Common perspectives of European artist travelers were infused with a hierarchical belief system that categorizes “Oriental” or Eastern peoples as inferior. The identity of Jewish women are magnified by the measures of inferiority. Examination of Delacroix’s works, which focus on Jewish feminine identity, will provide themes that explore issues of hierarchy, female subjugation, anti-Semitism, eroticization, as well as sexual, political and social dominance. Dominance is displayed at this time in history by France’s wish to politically govern North-Africa, men wished to master women, Muslims desire to exercise control over Jews, and Europeans certainly perceived that their culture was superior to others.

²³ Ibid., 156. Departement des Arts graphics, Louvre, RF 39050, fols. 20 verso to 22 verso. He transcribed information about the bride’s costume details and the event procedures. In an article published in Magasin Pittoresque in January 1842, Delacroix refers to the behavior of the Jewish bride, “She is seated . . . motionless as an Egyptian statue . . .” The published statement made by Delacroix about his perspective of the Jewish bride’s behavior as a comparison to an Egyptian statue is a subtly that has inspired me to look further into the language and descriptions employed in the works and journal notations of Delacroix’s Jewish women, as clues to Delacroix’s tendency to combine Muslim and Jewish identities. He transcribed information about the bride’s costume details and the event procedures. In an article published in Magasin Pittoresque in January 1842, Delacroix refers to the behavior of the Jewish bride, “She is seated . . . motionless as an Egyptian statue . . .” The published statement made by Delacroix about his perspective of the Jewish bride’s behavior as a comparison to an Egyptian statue is a subtly that has inspired me to look further into the language and descriptions employed in the works and journal notations of Delacroix’s Jewish women, as clues to Delacroix’s tendency to combine Muslim and Jewish identities. A closer examination revealed that some of Delacroix’s paintings have had their titles altered by the change of provenance and exposure to publication and exhibition title translation. Purchased by the du d’Orléans. Louvre, Paris. (Boime, 383.)

²⁴ It appears that some of Delacroix’s works have been subject to being titled as portraying Arab scenes, originally intended as Jewish scenes, having lost their identity similarly as Delacroix’s Moroccan Jewish women. (See Blondel, 156). (Boime, 362.) Delacroix notes in his journal, that he “sketched the daughter of Jacob [Benchimol’s brother] as a Moorish woman” (2 February, 1832), and he “sketched the Jewish woman Dititia [Leditia, Benchimol’s niece] in Algerian costume.” (12 February, 1832). Blending the identity of Muslim and Jewish women may also be seen in his note after the Jewish wedding of 21 February, Delacroix observed “two Jewish or Moorish women on a terrace, detaching themselves against the sky.” One example of this occurrence may be observed in, A Courtyard in Tangier, described in a catalogue of the Delacroix posthumous sale as Study of Interior used for the Jewish Wedding. Five years later at the Duzats sale the same painting was titled as Courtyard of an Arab Dwelling and again at the sale of the Chocquet collection when it was titled Courtyard of an Arab House. Collector Etienne Moreau-Nelaton had little trouble recognizing this work as being connected to The Jewish Wedding, exhibited at the 1841 Salon. This example and others such as; Backs of a Seated Moorish Woman and an Arab in a Burnous, Young Arab Seated by a Wall, and Two Studies of an Arab Aoud confirms that accuracy of descriptions and titles are inconsistent with the artist’s intent and that points to clues that more works may be suspect to discrepancies in their identity. (See Blondel, 170, 171.)

²⁵ What appears to be important to Europeans were superficial binary concepts of “good and bad,” and “us or them,” seen in this case in Orientalist depictions by Delacroix that focus on identity.

²⁶ Boime, 360. And, Blondel, 114. Delacroix wrote to Armand Bertin from Meknes, “At every stop one sees ready-made pictures which would bring fame and fortune to twenty generations of painters.” (See Blondel, 114.)

²⁷ Boime, 375. Gleyere’s influence included Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Bazille, who studied under him in the 1860’s.

²⁸ Boime, 363-382. Delacroix writes to his friend Pierret: “Imagine . . . seeing lying in the sun, walking about the streets . . . figures like Roman consuls, Catos, Brutuses, not even lacking that disdainful look which those rulers of the world must have worn.” North Africa is seen as a living antiquity, “Antiquity has nothing more beautiful.” He reportedly exclaimed upon entering the sequestered space of the women of Algiers, “It is beautiful! It is like the age of Homer!” (See Boime 382.)

²⁹ He penetrates the discussion with a probe of social, political, empirical, cultural, anti-Semitism, Orientalization, sexualized gazes versus private spaces, and other themes of Delacroix’s works.

³⁰ Ibid., 391. The Jewish female figure in Abduction of Rebecca, has costuming and slippers that are similar to the costuming in Jewish Wedding, and could easily fit into the artist’s Moroccan imagery.

³¹ Barthelemy Jobert. Delacroix. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998. 150.

³² Marie Lathers. Posing the "Belle Juive": Jewish Models in 19th-Century Paris. Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1. (Spring - Summer, 2000), 27-32 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0270-7993%28200021%2F22%2921%3A1%3C27%3APT%22JJM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23,

³³ Jobert, 155. Critical reviews and artist’s statements such as, including from Cézanne and the critic Planchete and others. Obituary done in 1864 by Charles Blanc.

³⁴ Lee Johnson. The Paintings of Eugene Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue 1832-1863. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

³⁵ Lynne Thornton. Women as Portrayed in Orientalist Painting. Paris: ACR PocheCouleur, 1994.

³⁶ Ibid. Thornton categorized images based on beauty, ceremony, bathing, hookah paintings, domesticity, tragedy, everyday life, seduction and more. Thornton further relegates the works further into Turkish, Egyptian and North African colonial territorial influences.

³⁷ Reina Lewis. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, Representation. New York, London: Routledge, 1996.

³⁸ Madeleine Dobie. Foreign Bodies: Gender, Language, and Culture in French Orientalism. California: Stanford University Press, 2001.

³⁹ Lewis contributes a vast discussion of women, nationalism, limited opportunities for women, as well as discussion of female Orientalist artists. Dobie contributes a vast amount of women traveler’s writings and experiences, from an English perspective of women travelers to Turkish harems, this book broadens the notion that all Orientalist paintings were created for the pleasure of men.

⁴⁰ Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, Eds. Orientalism and the Jews. United States: Brandeis University Press, 2005.

⁴¹ Covering an expansive topic of Biblical Jewry to anti-Semitic propaganda, Jew on Jew Orientalism as well as imagery, this contemporary text offers deep insight on the Jewish perspective that is vital in this research on Delacroix’s Jewish women of Morocco.

⁴² Blondel, 107. Blondel writes, “To capture ‘the striking sublimity that lies about one here and staggers one with reality’ . . . [Delacroix’s creed was] an aesthetic message confirmed . . . and used by all successive artistic movements. Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Matisse, Picasso . . . all drank from this source.” (See Blondel, 107.)

⁴³ Boime, 363. He compares a watercolor titled, Jewish Woman in Her Apartment (1832) and Delacroix’s print and two paintings with the same title, Jewess of Algiers (1833) for similarities in the pose of the seated barefoot woman. Examination of the print reveals that the dark-skinned servant is common in privileged Jewish homes, also depicted in the right hand corner of Jewish Wedding in Morocco, who is similarly dressed as the servant in Woman of Algiers. (See Boime, 363.)

⁴⁴ Ibid, 361. Boime discusses the condition of Delacroix’s ability to gain access to a Muslim household. Throughout Delacroix’s journey he was unable to gain access to Muslim households with women present. It was against Muslim law to permit a Christian male into a harem. (See Boime, 360, 361.)

⁴⁵ Ibid., 361.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 361. Jewish surnames commonly include the Hebrew word ben, which means ‘son of.’

⁴⁷ Ibid., 385. Jewish Wedding’s costume and architectural details, colors and light effects dominate the action of the figures and relegate them into a submissive role in the painting, mimicking the role of Jewish women in this patrimonial society. Delacroix’s notes from the wedding include, “ . . . The women to the left in lines one above the other like flower pots . . .” are textual language evident of the submissive role relegated to Jewish women. (Boime, 385.)

⁴⁸ Ibid., 388. The Salon catalog entry for Jewish Wedding in Morocco initially states, “Moors and Jews are mixed together . . .” The work is triangulated by three men, who oversee the ritual. The focus of the painting is the barefoot female dancer, in costume identical to those worn by Delacroix’s other Jewish female subjects. Delacroix’s notes specify that only women dance, as men must retain their dignity. I expect an outcome to reveal that Europeans perceive sensuous dancing to be tasteless and inappropriate. To the European observer of this painting would perceive this work from a perspective of elevated status. Theophile Gautier notes that none of the characters assumes “a European attitude.” (Boime, 388.)

⁴⁹ Ibid., 392.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 392.

⁵¹ Ibid., 393.

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