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With the
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Algerian Women in their Apartment, which he sent to the Salon of 1834, he entered upon an entirely new phase. It is painted in a rich impasto of luminous colours which sparkle in unbroken strength through an ambient of soft silvery grey atmosphere. The very choice of subject indicates a significant change. In the place of dramatic climax or tempestuous movement and passion and violent emotion, we find here complete repose and the indolent lassitude engendered by the luxurious comfort and by the strong scent of burning spices in the Eastern harem. In a subject of this kind the artist could allow himself to yield completely to the sensuous enjoyment of the rare and at the time entirely novel harmonies of pure, beautiful colour evolved by his brush. The superbly painted negress on the right of the composition undoubtedly owes much to the Spanish masters whom Delacroix must have studied during his brief visit to the Peninsula; and there is as little doubt that she in turn became the progenitor of the wonderful negress in Manet's
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Olympia.
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Algerian Women was a State commission for which Delacroix was paid the absurdly inadequate sum of £120. His indignation was great when he learnt that a higher value had been put upon a worse than mediocre picture by Decaisne. He almost refused to deliver the picture, but was eventually reconciled by the placing with him of a more important commission, namely,
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The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople for the Gallery of Versailles. He was given the commission--but he was at the same time informed that the King wanted a picture which did
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! This picture, which is now at the Louvre, was first shown at the Salon of 1841, and is undoubtedly one of the finest works of the master's maturity. One has only to compare it with
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The Massacre of Scio --in many ways a kindred subject--to realise the master's prodigious advance during the intervening years. The earlier picture, in spite of its undeniably fine qualities, cannot compare with
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The Crusaders as regards subdued splendour of colour. Delacroix himself admitted that the idea of
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The Massacre came to him in front of Gros's
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The Plague-stricken at Jaffa.
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J'ai mal lavé la palette de Gros, was the wording of his own confession. There is no trace of Gros in the sumptuous scheme of
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The Crusaders,