Delacroix's Moroccans: art and masculinity

Uittreksel

"The Women of Algiers in Their Apartment is arguably Eugène Delacroix's best-known work from his trip to Morocco in 1832, and the attention scholars have paid to it has obscured a crucial fact about Delacroix's Moroccan subjects: most of his paintings of North Africa depict men rather than women. After serving as a diplomat's companion on a mission to Morocco, Delacroix went on to devote over three-quarters of his massive North African oeuvre to the military prowess, effective leadership, equestrian virtuosity, and elegant dress of Moroccan men. Using the evidence of his writings, sketches, and paintings, Olmsted argues that rather than embodying a typical colonialist fantasy, Delacroix's paintings of Moroccan men instead show his subjects as models of heroic masculinity and political sovereignty, a position that ran counter to prevailing French attitudes toward North Africans. In this way, Delacroix's Moroccans intervenes in the discourse of imperialism to examine the multiple, heterogeneous features of cultural response and provides nuanced readings of the artist's work that support the idea that European constructions of non-European cultures were not monolithic." -- Adapted from publisher's description.

Inhoud

Introduction : revisiting Delacroix's orientalism -- From Chios to Tangier : the Ottoman influence -- Manly restraint : costume, classicism, and self-containment -- Men on horseback : military heroes of the Maghreb -- The sultan's authority : painting and politics at the Salon of 1845 -- Delacroix's Moroccans after 1845 : memory, imagination, and modern masculinity.