Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix (Charenton-Saint-Maurice 1798-1863 Paris)

Delacroix travelled to Morocco and North Africa in 1832 as part of a diplomatic entourage, and the people and places which he visited provided a rich vein of inspiration for the rest of his career. The figure leaning his head on his hand in the present drawing is a motif that reappears in two pictures: Costumes de Tanger (1832; Parke-Bernet, New York, 17 October 1973, lot 12) and Arabes d'Oran (1837; Delacroix, le voyage au Maroc, exhib. cat., Paris, Institut du Monde arabe, 1994-5, no. 70).