Sephardic Women of Tangier: A Portrait

Eugène Delacroix

1832

Watercolor featuring seated young woman in beaded headdress and flowing dress, and another woman in shawl leaning over her.
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In 1832, just two years after the French conquest of Algeria, French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) traveled to North Africa, creating a series of paintings and drawings that exoticized scenes of daily life in Algeria and Morocco. At the time, the Western world was swept up in a fascination with what they called "Oriental" culture, encompassing Asian, Mediterranean, and North African styles of dress, decor, and customs. While in Tangier, his delegation was accompanied by Abraham Benchimol (Ben-Chimol), a translator with the French consulate who also acted as a guide and adviser to Delacroix. Benchimol introduced the artist to Tangier’s Sephardic culture, taking him to a synagogue and a Jewish wedding. Delacroix painted this portrait of Benchimol’s wife, Saada, and his daughter, Préciada, on the day of Préciada’s marriage.

Credits

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

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Creator Bio

Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix was a French painter who is considered the leader of the French romantic movement in art. He began his formal training as an artist when he was a teenager. In 1822, he debuted at the Paris Salon, the annual art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, where he exhibited what is considered his first masterpiece, Dante and Virgil in Hell. He painted many pictures on historical subjects. Later in his career he painted murals for government buildings, including ceiling paintings for the Louvre, the Palais-Bourbon, and the Church of Saint Sulpice

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