Shop art print and framed art Le Kaïd, chef marocain by Eugène Delacroix

The Kaïd, a Moroccan chief, is an Orientalist oil-on-canvas painting by the French painter Eugène Delacroix, dated and signed 1837, and housed in the Musée d'Arts de Nantes. Delacroix was inspired by his stopover at El Ksar El Kébir on 9 April 1832, during which he witnessed a Moroccan chieftain's peaceful greetings. Le Kaïd, chef marocain was exhibited at the Salon de peinture et de sculpture in Paris in 1838. The exhibition in Nantes the following year led to its purchase by the Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes. This painting is known by many other names, including "Moroccan Chief Visiting a Tribe", "The Offering of Milk", "Arab Chief in a Tribe", and "The Halt, or the Moroccan Kaïd Accepting the Hospitality of Shepherds". The Kaïd, a Moroccan chief, has been described by critics as a sketch rather than a finished painting: "The movement," says one critic, "is energetic and natural, the expression lively and true"; although the drawing is only indicated, the colour, which covers the indecisive forms, is spread over the whole composition with the profusion of a man who knows his richness and loves to enjoy it. But let us also add, with another critic, that these pure and virgin touches of colour, so beautiful from afar, are no longer at all beautiful up close, and only present a confused layer of impasto, under which all distinct form of the objects, all drawing, all modelling, disappear. This is one of the general disadvantages of this method of painting; but M. Delacroix [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the orientalism style.

 

« Le Kaïd, chef marocain » is kept at Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France.

 

Find the full description of Le Kaïd, chef marocain by Eugène Delacroix on Wikipedia.