North Africa Changed Everything

In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Morocco and Algeria on a diplomatic mission. The light, color, and visual culture of North Africa transformed his palette. He wrote in his journal that Moroccan markets contained more color in a single street than a year in Paris.

Delacroix did not invent his style alone. As a young man he was struck by Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, whose tangle of straining bodies showed him how to make a painting feel like an event. He carried that lesson forward, and in turn Van Gogh and Matisse looked back to Delacroix as a starting point for modern painting.