Description

Women of Algiers in Their Apartment by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.
The Original Artwork
Title :Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
Artist:Eugène Delacroix
Date:1834
Medium:Oil on canvas
Location:Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Inspiration: Delacroix painted the work after a six-month journey to North Africa in 1832, where he visited Morocco and Algiers as part of a diplomatic mission. He was granted rare permission to enter a Muslim home and sketch the women in their private living quarters (harem), an experience that heavily influenced his work.
Style and Mood: The painting is a key example of Orientalism, a Western artistic movement that depicted romanticized and exoticized visions of the East. Delacroix used vibrant colors, dramatic lighting, and rich textures, which profoundly influenced later artists, including the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The 1834 version captures a serene yet somewhat separate mood, while his second version (1847-1849) is more nostalgic and inviting to the viewer.

Legacy: The painting was a great success and inspired many other artists, most notably Pablo Picasso, who created a famous series of 15 paintings and numerous drawings based on Delacroix’s masterpiece in 1954–1955.

Delacroix’s first version of Women of Algiers was painted in Paris in 1834 and is located in the Louvre, Paris, France. The second work, painted fifteen years later between 1847 and 1849, is located at the Musee Fabre, Montpellier, France. The two works both depict the same scene of four women together in an enclosed room. Despite the similar setting, the two paintings evoke completely different moods through the depiction of the women. Delacroix’s earlier 1834 work captures the separation between the women and the viewer. The second painting instead invites the viewer into the scene through the warm inviting gaze of the women.
Women of Algiers, along with Delacroix’s other Orientalist paintings, has inspired many artists of later generations. In 1888 both Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin travelled to Montpellier to view Delacroix’s 1849 version of Women of Algiers.