Episode from The Corsair by Lord Byron 1831

Eugène Delacroix made this watercolor, "Episode from The Corsair by Lord Byron," to depict a scene from the popular Romantic poem. The image shows a woman, Gulnare, holding a lamp aloft in a prison cell, where the wounded Corsair Conrad is chained. Delacroix’s Romanticism is exemplified by the Byronic subject matter: a focus on exotic locales, passion, and intense human drama. France in the early 19th century had a complex relationship with the "Orient," one of fascination, colonial ambition, and a sense of cultural superiority. Delacroix would later visit North Africa and the art he produced there would shape European understanding of non-Western cultures, albeit filtered through a Western lens. As historians, we examine diverse materials, including literary sources, travel writing, and political documents to understand how these images participated in the construction of cultural identities and power relations.