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Provenance: A gift from the artist to Comte Charles de Mornay, Paris.
His sale, Drouot, Paris, 29 March 1877, lot 8 (610 francs).
Purchased at the above sale by the Duc de Vicence, Paris.
Thence by descent until 1973.
Galerie André Watteau, Paris.
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owner in 1973.
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Literature: A. Robaut, L'Oeuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix: peintures, dessins, gravures, lithographies, Paris, 1885, p. 133, no. 499.
L. Johnson, 'Towards a reconstruction of Delacroix's Mornay Album', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXLV, February 2003, no. 1199, p. 94, fig. 34 (illustrated).
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF AN ENGLISH PRIVATE COLLECTOR
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As well as one of the giants of 19th century European art, Eugène Delacroix was the first truly 'Orientalist' painter. His trip to North Africa in 1832 provided a travel and working template for all the key artists who continued in this genre. Delacroix's works, however, are usually less contrived than those who followed in his footsteps: they have all the freshness of a first encounter, and combine a Romantic vision of a noble people with a fascination for local colour.
The present work is one of a suite of eighteen signed and finished watercolours (Robaut, op. cit, nos. 494 - 511) that Delacroix presented to the Comte de Mornay to commemorate the French diplomatic expedition to the Sultan of Morocco led by Mornay in 1832. The mission was initiated by King Louis-Philippe to resolve various problems stemming from France's occupation of Algeria. Delacroix was invited by Mornay to join the trip as a travelling companion, but had to pay his own expenses. The expedition arrived in Tangier on 25 January 1832. In March it moved to Meknes to gain an audience with Sultan Muley Abd el-Rahman, returning to Tangier on 10 April.
The drawings and sketches that Delacroix made on and immediately after the trip were to have a singular effect on the development of his career by providing source material for the Orientalist paintings that he continued to paint for the rest of his life. They included numerous drawings of the mission's encampments (fig. 1), of Moroccan landscape and architecture, and quickly drafted portraits of local people, which Delacroix recorded in sketchbooks.
In the Mornay album Delacroix worked up these quick impressions into more finished works which allowed the Count to recall the highlights of his extraordinary mission. These included the encampment near Ksar el-Kabir, the stop-off point near Tangier, the spectacle of the Tangier fanatics, the procession of the wild Aïssaouas -- members of a sect founded by Mohammed ben Aïssa -- and domestic scenes of local colour, such as the present work and of Arabs at the market. Additionally there was a gallery of portraits, which included the Sultan and several of his courtiers. Some of these works were likely made in Morocco and others in Toulon during a period of enforced quarantine imposed on the delegation immediately after its return. The project as a whole was almost certainly conceived during the voyage. In one of the Moroccan sketchbooks, preserved today in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, Delacroix noted nine prospective subjects to 'faire pour M. [Mornay]', five of which found a place in the final set: 'femme à la fontaine [the present work]/cavalier courant la poudre/Abou chez lui/Abraham [Benchimol]/les acteurs.'
The standing figure of the woman at the fountain in the present work served, as did several of the Mornay sheets, as a source for a later work, in this instance a wood-engraving, Costumes Maures, published in L'illustration in 1844. Fourteen of the eighteen watercolours from the Mornay album have been traced: of these three are in the Louvre; two are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and one each in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (MA), the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The present work is one of six remaining in private collections.
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