The Convulsionists of Tangier

1837–38

Oil on canvas, 95.57 × 128.59 cm. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis

Members of the Aissawa, a Sufi brotherhood, surge through a street in Tangier in a religious trance while townspeople look on. Here North Africa appears as a crowd in motion, not a quiet interior.

During the 1832 mission, he and the Comte de Mornay watched the procession pass from a boarded-up window under the roof.
Look at the raised arms and bowed heads at the center, and the onlookers crowding the rooftops above.
Painted in France about five years after the event.
Riopelle (National Gallery) notes that in Morocco Delacroix made only drawings and watercolors; the paintings came later, from memory, and here he heightened the color of the scene he had glimpsed.
Long known as The Fanatics of Tangier, it was once owned by James J. Hill and came to Mia as a bequest of J. Jerome Hill.

Image: Minneapolis Institute of Art (open access) · Public domain