Arab Horsemen Carrying Away Their Dead

Chassériau composed this scene after spending two months in Algeria in 1846. Like Eugène Delacroix, whose work he admired, Chassériau drew artistic inspiration from his experiences in North Africa. Unlike the older painter, who produced numerous fictional illustrations after his travels in Morocco, Chassériau promoted the documentary portrayal of the “Orient.” Here, for example, he notes the brutality of the African battlefield — likely a reference to the violent clashes between Algeria’s Arab population and the French colonialists. Although he championed realistic representations, Chassériau here employs classical compositional strategies. He divides the scene into three distinct planes, placing a field of corpses in the foreground, a convoy of horsemen behind them, and a rugged landscape in the background. Draped in a chalky white robe evocative of the mountains beyond, the centrally positioned Arab rises above the rest of the scene, a figure of human courage and endurance.