Moroccan Horseman Crossing a Ford

A Moroccan horseman charges across a ford, fist raised and mount rearing as it gains the riverbank, while behind him an open plain runs toward a chain of dark mountains under a turbulent sky. Delacroix drew on his 1832 journey to Morocco — a trip he recorded in feverish notes, sketches and watercolours — for this and his other horsemen subjects; he saw in the riders he encountered a living incarnation of the nobility of spirit and strength of will he associated with the heroes of antiquity. Painted about 1850 on a small scale for private contemplation, the canvas belongs to the retreat into a more subjective realm of exoticism and fantasy that marked the later years of the leader of French Romanticism. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.