Eugène Delacroix
French, 1798–1863
Convulsionists of Tangier, 1837–1838
Oil on canvas
In 1832, Eugène Delacroix traveled to North Africa with the French ambassador, the Count de Mornay. Five years later, Delacroix painted this scene: the ritual pilgrimage of the Aissawa, a Sufi Islamic brotherhood, through the streets of Tangier, Morocco. From a boarded-up attic window, Delacroix and de Mornay had observed the entranced celebrants eating glass, biting their own arms (as seen at the bottom), and performing other self-abusive acts to draw attention to their religion—a commotion Delacroix conveyed with vivid colors and vigorous brushstrokes.
This painting once belonged to James J. Hill (1838–1916), the Minnesota railroad magnate whose collection of European paintings forms the basis of the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s nineteenth-century art collection.
