Editing Eugène Delacroix (section)

==Travel to North Africa==
[[File:Eugène Delacroix - The Fanatics of Tangier - WGA06195.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Convulsionists of Tangiers]]'' (1838), [[Minneapolis Institute of Art]]]]

In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa in company with the diplomat [[Charles-Edgar de Mornay]], as part of a diplomatic mission to [[Morocco]] shortly after the French conquered [[French rule in Algeria|Algeria]]. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more "primitive" culture.<ref name="wellington_xv" /> He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in [[Orientalism]].<ref>Jobert, p. 140.</ref> Delacroix was entranced by the people and their clothes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece:

<blockquote>The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus...<ref name="wellington_xv" /></blockquote>
[[Image:Eugene delacroix.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[Self-portrait]]'', 1837. "Eugène Delacroix was a curious mixture of skepticism, politeness, dandyism, willpower, cleverness, despotism, and finally, a kind of special goodness and tenderness that always accompanies genius".<ref>Baudelaire, quoted in Jobert, p. 27.</ref>]]
He managed to sketch some women secretly in [[Algiers]], as in the painting ''[[Women of Algiers in their Apartment]]'' (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}} Less problematic was the painting of [[Jewish]] women in North Africa, as subjects for the ''Jewish Wedding in Morocco'' (1837–1841).

While in [[Tangier]], Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city, subjects to which he would return until the end of his life.<ref>Wellington, p. xvi.</ref> Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as ''[[Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable]]'' (1860), ''The Lion Hunt'' (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and ''Arab Saddling his Horse'' (1855).