"First" Thesis Prospectus : Delacroix's Jewish Women of Morocco

September 1, 2009

Prospectus - Qualifying Paper

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

Paige Dansinger

Delacroix’s Jewish Women of Morocco: Identity in Nineteenth Century French Orientalist Paintings

Introduction

“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.” -----Eugène Delacroix.

‘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.

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 mission, which lasted six months, influenced the artist’s work for the duration of his life.

Mornay chose Delacroix to record the events, people, typography, visual information and intelligence that would benefit the state.

Delacroix landed in Tangier, 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 in an excited letter to Pierret, “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.”

Mornay felt disdain for Tangier’s local attractions, including the Jewish people.

Delacroix’s position towards the Jews was somewhat in contrast to Mornay’s.

His experience with the Moroccan Jews was considered revelatory. Delacroix gathered sensory details and perceptions in his journal because each new experience revealed something unknown.

The artist ignored Mornay’s disdain and with less preconception, recorded hundreds of notes and sketches taken in his journals, which became source material for later paintings (figure 1).

The subject of my research is Jewish feminine identity portrayed in Delacroix’s paintings. This research will provide a chronological survey of the artist’s works, sketches, journal notes, exhibition descriptions and titles, as well as Salon reviews that correspond with the exhibition of Delacroix’s paintings of Jewish women. Employing a biographical exploration of Romantic literature, including Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales, scholar’s texts and the artist’s works within the context of French Orientalist paintings will offer a better understanding of the identity of Jewish women from Morocco depicted in French Orientalist painting. This research is important in the discourse of art history to aid in establishing how Jewish feminine identity has influenced French art during the period of Romanticism in Orientalist paintings and its influence on art history, Jewish studies and nineteenth century feminine identity.

Delacroix passionately observed the details of the Jewish community and his Jewish hosts, whose lives “were marked by social events and gestures derived from the most ancient customs . . .”

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.

Moroccan women aroused Delacroix’s interest and his days become filled with the excitement of filling his journals with sketches and details of their dresses while strolling through the Jewish quarter, or mellah.

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.

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 (figure 2).

Although he painted the portraits of the Jewish women of the Benchimol, Buzencot family, and other models in Jewish homes, they are devoid of individuality.

It appears that the Jewish models look similar in physicality and expression.

Delacroix’s notations of Jewish women devote more attention to the complex costumes and leave little concern for the individuality of the women’s identity.

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.”

The proposed research will provide a chronological survey of the artist’s works, sketches, journal notes, exhibition descriptions and titles, as well as Salon reviews that correspond with the exhibition of Delacroix’s paintings of Jewish women. Employing a biographical exploration of the works in their cultural context and within the context of French Orientalist paintings, will offer a better understanding of the identity of Jewish women in Morocco portrayed in French Orientalist paintings. This research is important in the discourse of art history to establish how Jewish feminine identity has influenced French Orientalist paintings and how this information relates to identity in Morocco for Jewish women, as depicted in Delacroix’s paintings, as well as the perception of Jewish women by men in France during the nineteenth century.

The initial response of Delacroix to the people he met in Morocco exposes the artist’s excitement to his new surroundings. His notes also convey that 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. This research will identify issues, such as dominance, hierarchy and eroticism while exploring the works of Delacroix.

The Problem

Delcaroix’s journals were a rich source of material for paintings. The Jewish Bride of Tangier (figure 3) is one example of a painting created from the artist’s feverish notations.

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. 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.

This signifies that Europeans possibly modified the identity of Delacroix’s works to accommodate the private or public audience. This could mean that the idea of identity was ultimately permeable, temporary and insignificant to European culture at this time. 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. It is important to understand the lack of priority that individuality commanded, as seen in the depictions of Delacroix’s works and their history, and more specifically for this research, the identity of the Jewish women.

Discrepancies found in the paintings and the model’s identity presents a conflict of Jewish feminine identity in Delacroix’s Moroccan paintings. A secondary hypothesis is that further analysis may reveal that some of the artist’s works likely have lost their intended identity as depictions of Jewish life.

An inspection of works that possibly have suspicious identity may offer a better understanding of identity. This research will employ analysis, cross-examination and comparison of the costume, which Delacroix focused much of his notations and other details and testimony found in his journals, exhibition descriptions of Delacroix’s paintings and art historical criticism. I will reveal new perspectives on Delacroix’s works, as well as progressive findings that relate to Jewish life for women in Morocco and the perception of women by men in France at this time, and their influence on art history.

Upon return to France, Delacroix exhibited at the Salon of 1833 a watercolor titled Jewish Family, Costumes of Morocco, the first public display of his Moroccan voyage, an affirmation of the influence of his experiences with the Jewish community in Morocco.

Delacroix regularly exhibited other paintings at the French Salon clearly depicting Jewish life, including Jewish Wedding in Morocco, painted in 1837 and exhibited in 1841 (figure 4).

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

Women of Algiers in their Apartment, (figure 5) is an example I will use in the secondary investigation of Jewish identity in the depictions of Moroccan women painted by Delacroix, to better understand the fusion of identity of the models, within the context of the artist’s paintings of Jewish women, journals, Salon reviews, influences, contemporary literature, and scholarship within the genre of French Orientalist paintings.

Questions which concern this research, that would help understand Jewish women’s identity, including Women of Algiers in their Apartment and other works from Delacroix’s Moroccan journey are:

1. What is the Jewish context and personal history of the identity of the models in Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in their Apartment, and what were the conditions of Delacroix’s visit to their apartment?

2. Does the fusion of Muslim and Jewish identities reveal itself in Delacroix’s other works, such as Jewish Wedding in Morocco, and how is an awareness of the fusion of identity beneficial towards the discussion of Jewish women’s identity in Delacroix’s works?

3. How have other scholars treated Women of Algiers in their Apartment in the context of Delacroix’s work, Orientalism and Jewish identity? How has this information contributed to art historical discourse?

4. Why was Women of Algiers in their Apartment the painting that defined Delacroix as an Orientalist painter, rather than Jewish Bride or Jewish Wedding in Morocco, and are there other factors which promoted the popularity of Women of Algiers in their Apartment?

5. Through a chronological investigation of Delacroix’s works, is there evidence of evolution of his perceptions and depictions of Jewish women within historical context?

6. How did the European audience perceive Delacroix’s paintings?

7. What meanings may be understood by stylistic shifts between the romantic voyeuristic gaze of eroticized space versus realistic documentation of the ritualized domestic realm, as seen in the contrast between Women of Algiers and Jewish Wedding? Did Delacroix disguise stylistic differences within the same paintings to capitalize on favorable European and Salon responses?

The procedures I will follow to gain better comprehension of Delacroix’s Jewish women of Morocco’s identity, including identity issues presented in the Women of Algiers in their Apartment and other works, may be best fulfilled for this research by using the methodology of Stylistic and Feminist analysis. I will employ visual and textual evidence, as well as scholarship concerning Delacroix’s journals and paintings of Jewish women, Salon reviews relating to exhibition of works depicting Jewish women, 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 which focuses 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 discussion of Delacroix by focusing 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 is offered 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 his administration, with a look at 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.”

Boime 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 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. Boime then concludes his discussion by discussing Delacroix’s later work, including The Abduction of Rebecca. This painting illustrates Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel, Ivanhoe. The theme of the Jewish female victim relates with the works from Delacroix’s Moroccan series.

Much primary visual source material, titles, description of works, as well as biographical and exhibition records of Delacroix’s journey, have been gained from Tamara Blondel’s translation of Delacroix in Morocco (1994). Delacroix’s 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, a chronicle of Delacroix’s work in Morocco. An exhibition chronology is clearly defined by portfolios, journals, sketches and watercolors created in Morocco, as well as major works created and exhibited for the Paris Salon. Reviews, critical analysis, artist writings and curatorial exhibition descriptions and scholarship, including provenance records contribute a biographical understanding of Delacroix’s expedition, as well as primary images and their influences.

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, as well as categorizing 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. 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, regardless that this research’s focus is confined to French Orientalism, a more broad understanding of Eurocentric Orientalization and Anti-Semitism is important to comprehend its encompassing effects in art, literature and cultural expressions. 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. Although some texts are not directly about Delacroix’s works of Jewish women in Morocco, they lend contextual evidence of the influence of Orientalism on women’s identity, race, language and culture.

A significant text for this topic combines Orientalism and Jewish studies, Orientalism and the Jews, edited by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (2005).

This text provides an invaluable discussion of Orientalism and the Jews. Included is a discussion of 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. 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.

Several more texts are formative in this research including, Roger Benjamin’s Orientalist Aesthetics: Art Colonialism and French North Africa 1880-1930,

as well as, Lee Johnson’s Delacroix’s ‘Jewish Bride,’

and The Paintings of Eugene Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue 1832-1863.

These texts provide Orientalist context, including Delacroix as an artist and his images of Jewish brides. 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 some inevitable outcomes by using Stylistic and Feminist methodological approaches to analyze Delacroix’s Orientalist paintings of Jewish women of Morocco. 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. These outcomes will be evident in Delacroix’s Moroccan series.

Some expected outcomes will encompass better comprehension of Jewish women’s identity according to depictions of Delacroix’s paintings during and after his journey to Morocco. Other assumed results focus on deciphering the identity of the actual Jewish models and family members that the artist captured in his works, including the context and role which Women of Algiers in their Apartment, Jewish Wedding in Morocco and other works, which contributes to understanding the role of Jewish women’s identity in French Orientalism. Boime explains that the visual evidence supports my secondary hypothesis that there are many Jewish elements in the painting, Women of Algiers in their Apartment.

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.

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

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.

Often harem dwellers were kidnapped by foreign invaders and may belong to numerous ethnic, national and religious groups.

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

Jewish last names commonly have the Hebrew word ‘ben’ (also seen in Benchimol), which means ‘son of.’ Restoration of the name to it’s 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. An expected outcome of further investigation will prove more evidence about pariah status and the confirmation of the frequency rates of conversion, supporting the balance perceived between Muslim and Jewish identity in North-Africa during this time. This is important because many Jews converted during the Inquisition of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to New-Christians (Moranos) and immigrated from Spain and Portugal to North-Africa and then again from New-Christians to Muslims to protect their lives. Jews living openly in Northern-Africa were subject to severe dominance and degradation. Conversion was a natural response to the subjugated Jews.

I also expect to be able to recognize the influence of the Jewish women the artist met during the Moroccan journey in the painting, Jewish Wedding in Morocco. The stylistic shift between this work and Women of Algiers, from romantic exoticism to realistic genre is a response that explores the theme of forbidden space and ritualized domain.

The stylistic shift is an aspect of research I expect to further explore within my chronological survey of Delacroix’s works in the context of French Orientalism. I expect I will find that Delacroix employed both erotism and realism within some of the works, such as Jewish Wedding in Morocco.

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.”

Further research will provide an expected outcome that offers more textual evidence that supports a hierarchical attitude by Europeans when they view Delacroix’s works, through Salon reviews and publications.

The painting’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. Outcomes that derive from analysis between works, journal entries and Salon catalogs are procedures I will continue to follow to establish evidence to support the outcomes which support that Jewish female identity constitutes a diminished status in North-African culture, confirmed in Delacroix’s notes and paintings from Morocco.

Comparisons of Delacroix’s works, visual and textual evidence and other stated resources provide evidence to support my expected outcomes. Another outcome I hope to achieve is to witness if any evolution occurs in the depiction of Delacroix’s Jewish women’s identity in Orientalist paintings. One way to confirm the status and influence of Jewish women in his later works, is to address the painting, The Abduction of Rebecca, which illustrates a scene in Ivanhoe.

The Jewish female figure of this work has costuming and slippers that are similar to the costuming in Jewish Wedding, and could easily fit into the artist’s Moroccan imagery.

In this painting, Rebecca becomes both subject and object.

Boime sees a resemblance of Rebecca to the Moroccan Jewesses, and relates this representation with 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 discussion, ultimately focusing on dominance, Jewish victimhood is predominant in Delacroix’s paintings. The binary of dominant foe and helpless victim is duplicated in all the works this research has provided, in metaphorical idioms of Orientalization, witnessed in the Romantic paintings of Delacroix. The artist represented his Eurocentric attitude and class structure, “fantasies of masculinist domination and female submission” and the painter of the July-Monarchy's need to express it’s colonial dominance in symbolic terms.

At the conclusion of this research, I expect to have deeper insight on the identity of Jewish women in Delacroix’s works, including Women of Algiers in their Apartments and their influence on art history, as well as grasp why this work became a definitive work for Delacroix. I do expect to have a deep understanding of Jewish women’s identity as a subject of dominance and victimization, as portrayed in Delacroix’s paintings from Morocco and French Orientalist paintings from the nineteenth century. I expect this quest to be equally influential on art historical discourse and Jewish cultural studies as Delacroix’s journey was on art history.

See. Blondel, Tamara, Trans. Delacroix in Morocco. France: Institut du Monde Arabe and Flammarion, 1994.

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

* Footnotes and images did not copy over, but I will happily supply an emailed copy of the official Prospectus.