Jacques Majorelle (French, 1886-1962)

In 1917, at the age of 31, Jacques Majorelle arrived in Tangiers on his first visit to Morocco. Overawed by the country, he would eventually spend the rest of his life there. As early as 1923 he began work on his villa in Marrakech, built in the Moorish style, and whose gardens, later restored by Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé, are now world famous. Majorelle followed in the footsteps of Delacroix and the famous Orientalist painters who had travelled to North Africa in the mid-19th century. However he developed and created a new pictorial language in which the legacy of Orientalism is subsumed to the new modernist currents in paintings. The painter leaves behind the imaginary Orient, the fashionable Harem scenes, Fantasias, and Palace guards, to focus more on everyday subjects: the souks, the markets and city life. In the present work a group of very colourfully dresses ladies in Haïk are awaiting the arrival of the Sultan in Marrakech.