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Of Suliots, Arnauts, Albanians and Eugène Delacroix
Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer
The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 125, No. 965. (Aug., 1983), pp. 486-491.
Stable URL:
links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-6287%28198308%29125%3A965%3C486%3AOSAAAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
The Burlington Magazine is currently published by The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd..
Of Suliots, Arnauts, Albanians and Euglne
Delacroix l
BY NINA ATHANASSOGLOU-KALLMYER
DELACROIX'S fascination with the near east in the 1820s, in
part as a result of his interest in the Greek War of Independence,
accounts for a number of studies of oriental costumes,
among which the best known are perhaps his oil sketches representing
dancing Suliots (Fig.38) .2
A water-colour of Two Albanians, in a private collection in
Athens, can now be related to this group of works (Fig.34).3
Two chieftains are shown within a landscape that recedes
towards a low, distant horizon. The man on the left poses in
rather stiffcontrapposto. His companion sits cross-legged, Oriental
style. The standing man wears the white kilt, and embroidered
vest and sash typical of Albanian dress. His red and blue
woollen cape hangs loosely on his shoulders, revealing his right
hand resting on a pistol. Lean and sunburnt, his face has
sharp, hawk-like features and a dark moustache. His highshaven
forehead is framed by long strands of hair and crowned
by the traditional red skull-cap. The sitting man is all in white,
The Albanians were a mountain population from the region of Epirus, in the
north-west part of the Ottoman Empire. They were predominantly Muslim.
The Suliots were a Christian Albanian tribe, which in the eighteenth century
settled in a mountainous area close to the town of Jannina. They struggled to
remain independent and fiercely resisted Ali Pasha, the tyrannic ruler of
Epirus. They were defeated in 1822 and, banished from their homeland, took
refuge in the Ionian Islands. It was there that Lord Byron recruited a number
of them to form his private guard, prior to his arrival in Missolonghi in 1824.
Arnauts was the name given by the Turks to the Albanians.
*They are reproduced and studied in LEE JOHNSON: Th Patntings of Eugine
Delacroix. A Crttical Catalogue, I and 11, New York [1981], Nos 28, 29, 30, 31
and pls 24, 25, 26 and 27.
The water-colour measures 13.2 by 12.2 cm. It is stamped with the Delacroix
sale cachet, 'ED', in the lower left corner.
but for his colourful vest and sash. Across his lap he holds a
long pipe.
The colours are of a startling brightness. Luminous blue and
carmine, frank oranges and pure white are set in direct juxtaposition.
Ornaments and embroideries are picked out in
gold. Decorative details are treated like flat patterns, while
other forms are modelled with delicate, miniature-like touches.
Brilliant colours, gold highlights and sensitive brushstroke, all
contribute to the precious character of this work, which betrays
Delacroix's interest in Persian miniatures around 1820.4
The background and surrounding landscape are treated in
light, transparent washes, while the sky rolls its soft green-blue
masses in the distance. The large expanse of sky and its free
handling indicate the influence of British water-colour landscapes,
more particularly those by Delacroix's friend Bonington.
There are also evident similarities of hue and treatment
between this sky and that of the 'Massacre of Chios.
As opposed to the rather general handling of the setting, the
figures are depicted with great specificity. Delacroix must have
intended the latter to serve as mementoes, as records of ethnic
types and dress, part of the process of collecting Orientalist
visual imagery in which he was engaged in the 1820s. His
enthusiasm at the lush beauty of the Albanian costume must
have matched that of his favourite poet at the time, Byron. In a
letter to his mother from Epirus dated 12th November 1809,
Byron had marvelled at 'the Albanians, in their dresses, (the
most magnificent in the world, consisting of long, white kilt,
gold-worked cloak, crimson velvet gold laced jacket and waistcoat,
silver mounted pistols and daggers). . .';5 he admitted to
having succumbed to the temptation and acquired some of
these 'magnificent Albanian dresses. . . . They cost fifty
guineas each, and have so much gold, they would cost in England
two h ~ n d r e d 'L. ~es s fortunate, Delacroix must have contented
himself with borrowing them from the cosmopolitan
Monsieur Auguste as well as studying them in illustrated
travel books. The Athens water-colour is a case in point.
The two Albanians are, indeed, directly copied from plates I
and IV ofJoseph Cartwright's Selectzon of the Costume of Albania
and Greece, a book of full-page colour prints engraved by Robert
Have11 after Cartwright's originals, and published in London
in 1822 (Figs 35 and 37).' Delacroix here combines the two
LEE JOHNSON:'TWOSources of Oriental Motifs Copied by Delacroix', Gazette
des Beaux-Arts, 65, VI [1965], pp.163-67.
The N'orks of Lord Bvron. Letters and Journals, I, New York [1966], p.246,
No.131.
Ibid. Other travellers had shown equal interest. In his Lettres sur la .iforle et les
iles de Cirigo, Hydra et Zante, I, Paris [1808], p.96, A. L. CASTELLAN describes the
Albanian costume and includes an illustration of it (p1.21); in E. D. DODWELL:
A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, During the Years 18V1, 18V5 and
1806. 11, London [1819], pp. 134ff. we read: 'Others wear the small red skullcap,
and others the turban. . . . The Albanians or Arnauts . . . are extremely
fond of gold and silver ornaments in their dress . . . . They follow the fashion
set them by Hercules, of wearing pelisses; but instead of the lion's skin are
covered with the soft and fleecy ermine; . . . . The wealthier Arnauts have the
outer vest of velvet and gold, richly interwoven with elegant ornaments . . . .
The breeches which are white are tied below the knees with a coloured garter.
. .' Delacroix echoes such descriptions in the handwritten notations to a
pen drawing of a man and a woman in Albanian dress (Louvre, RF 9145 folio
42 recto): '11s on1 une calotte de feutre . . . cothurne de bure . . . (costume des Mirdites,
race albanaise). Les argyro Castrites [sic] dont les habzts igalent la neige en blamheur.' 'The legend on plate I reads: 'An Albanian. Oft the rich pipe he presses to his
lips (The Gally Knight)'. That on plate IV: 'An Albanian ofJannina. These
the firm squadrons of Albania's Lord. By the white vest and crimson cap (the
sign of waste and woe) they know the Albanian line (The Gally Knight)'.
Joseph Cartwright (1789-1829), from Dawlish in Devonshire, was a marine
painter attached to the British navy. He was appointed paymaster-general in
the British held Ionian Islands, where he was able to observe and make live
studies from Greek types, costumes and landscapes. These he published after
his return to England. Best known among his travel publications are his Views
zn the Ionian Islands.
individual Cartwright figures into a single composition, and
endows them with greater realism by integrating them into a
natural setting.
Although we know that Delacroix was familiar with yet
another major collection of illustrations from the Near East,
Louis Dupri's Voyage i Athines et i Constantinople, ou Collection de
Portraits, de Vues et de Comtumes Grecs. . . [1825], until now we
have had no indication that he knew- ~ a r i w r i ~ h t 'bso ok.
Neither Journal nor Correspondance mentions it; and unlike
Dupri, no Cartwright drawing or print was recorded among
his possessions in the posthumous sale of his e ~ t a t eO. ~nl y a
modest pencil drawing at the Louvre provides some supporting
evidence (Fig.40);9 displaying the simple, tracing outline
that Delacroix uses when copying the original exactly, it brings
together in balanced union, much like the Athens watercolour,
two more figures from two different Cartwright plates:
a red-shawled Arnaut standing full-face holding a gun, and an
Albanian woman in profile, facing him (Figs 41 and 42).1°
Delacroix, therefore, knew several plates from Cartwright. Did
he see the album at Pierret's? The Louvre drawing is, indeed,
done on the back of a cleaner's bill issued to Madame Pierret.
The bill also provides us with a relatively secure dating: a
printed fill-in date reads 'Paris, le , 182 ,
Thus, both the Louvre drawing and the Two Albanians are
almost certainly from the 1820s, a date corroborated by subject
matter and stvle as well.
Closest to the Two Albanians in size, format, conception and
style is the water-colour Two Greek soldiers by the sea (Fig.36)."
Here, however, there appears to be no direct printed prototype.
Two Greek soldiers is, rather, an example of the artist's
experimentation with compositional solutions and poses
(especially those that set the costumes off at their best) using
the characters originally borrowed from the prints. Just like
the two Albanians, the two Greeks are set within a landscape
remarkable for its rugged barrenness. Delacroix seems to have
deliberately chosen a setting that would match and reflect the
wild, indomitable nature of his figures. His source of inspiration
might have been Byron; in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage the
'4lbanian Suliots are a barbarous race, unrestrained in their
joys, fearsome in their wrath. They are the inhabitants of savage
lands, cave dwellers, on a par with wolves and vultures.
Brave and invincible, they are identified with natural forces as
they storm 'to the plain like the stream from the rock . . .'.I2
Just like Byron, Delacroix must have seen the Suliots as
modern primitives, embodiments of natural purity unspoiled
by civilisation. Being - as it was thought - the descendants of
the ancient Greeks, the Suliots must have also been considered
as a reflection of the pristine humanity of antiquity. Delacroix's
reaction, in 1832, to the Arabs of Algeria, a people that
he saw as 'wholly antique', is very similar: in their primitive
and rude simplicity, the Arabs, like the Suliots, were the mods
See NINA ATHANASSOGLO'MU:ore on Delacroix's Oriental Sources', THE BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE, CXXI [1979], p.587.
RF 10230, measuring 17 by 18 cm.
lo The Arnaut is from plate V: 'A Red-Shawled Arnaut. I ask not the pleasures
that riches supply. My Sabre shall win what the feeble must buy. Lord
Byron's Childe Harold. Canto 2'. The Albanian woman is from plate VIII:
'Albanian Female. She yields to one her person and her heart. Train'd to her
cage nor feels or wish to roam. Childe Harold. Canto 2'. RAYMOND ESCHOLIER:
Delacrotx. Peintre, Graveur, Ecriuain, I, Paris [1926], p.1 15, published a watercolour
version of the Red-Shawled Arnaut, formerly with the Marcel
Guirin collection (here Fig.39).
l1 In a London private collection. it measures 23.2 by 19.5 cm. See LEE
JOHNSON: Delacroix, exh. cat., Edinburgh International Festival [1964], No. 104,
Pl.51. I wish to thank Professor Johnson for bringing this water-colour to my
attention as well as for his useful suggestions on my script.
l2 BYRON: Poetical Works, Oxford University Press/London [1967], p.205: Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 11.
Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer
The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 125, No. 965. (Aug., 1983), pp. 486-491.
Stable URL:
links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-6287%28198308%29125%3A965%3C486%3AOSAAAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
The Burlington Magazine is currently published by The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd..
Of Suliots, Arnauts, Albanians and Euglne
Delacroix l
BY NINA ATHANASSOGLOU-KALLMYER
DELACROIX'S fascination with the near east in the 1820s, in
part as a result of his interest in the Greek War of Independence,
accounts for a number of studies of oriental costumes,
among which the best known are perhaps his oil sketches representing
dancing Suliots (Fig.38) .2
A water-colour of Two Albanians, in a private collection in
Athens, can now be related to this group of works (Fig.34).3
Two chieftains are shown within a landscape that recedes
towards a low, distant horizon. The man on the left poses in
rather stiffcontrapposto. His companion sits cross-legged, Oriental
style. The standing man wears the white kilt, and embroidered
vest and sash typical of Albanian dress. His red and blue
woollen cape hangs loosely on his shoulders, revealing his right
hand resting on a pistol. Lean and sunburnt, his face has
sharp, hawk-like features and a dark moustache. His highshaven
forehead is framed by long strands of hair and crowned
by the traditional red skull-cap. The sitting man is all in white,
The Albanians were a mountain population from the region of Epirus, in the
north-west part of the Ottoman Empire. They were predominantly Muslim.
The Suliots were a Christian Albanian tribe, which in the eighteenth century
settled in a mountainous area close to the town of Jannina. They struggled to
remain independent and fiercely resisted Ali Pasha, the tyrannic ruler of
Epirus. They were defeated in 1822 and, banished from their homeland, took
refuge in the Ionian Islands. It was there that Lord Byron recruited a number
of them to form his private guard, prior to his arrival in Missolonghi in 1824.
Arnauts was the name given by the Turks to the Albanians.
*They are reproduced and studied in LEE JOHNSON: Th Patntings of Eugine
Delacroix. A Crttical Catalogue, I and 11, New York [1981], Nos 28, 29, 30, 31
and pls 24, 25, 26 and 27.
The water-colour measures 13.2 by 12.2 cm. It is stamped with the Delacroix
sale cachet, 'ED', in the lower left corner.
but for his colourful vest and sash. Across his lap he holds a
long pipe.
The colours are of a startling brightness. Luminous blue and
carmine, frank oranges and pure white are set in direct juxtaposition.
Ornaments and embroideries are picked out in
gold. Decorative details are treated like flat patterns, while
other forms are modelled with delicate, miniature-like touches.
Brilliant colours, gold highlights and sensitive brushstroke, all
contribute to the precious character of this work, which betrays
Delacroix's interest in Persian miniatures around 1820.4
The background and surrounding landscape are treated in
light, transparent washes, while the sky rolls its soft green-blue
masses in the distance. The large expanse of sky and its free
handling indicate the influence of British water-colour landscapes,
more particularly those by Delacroix's friend Bonington.
There are also evident similarities of hue and treatment
between this sky and that of the 'Massacre of Chios.
As opposed to the rather general handling of the setting, the
figures are depicted with great specificity. Delacroix must have
intended the latter to serve as mementoes, as records of ethnic
types and dress, part of the process of collecting Orientalist
visual imagery in which he was engaged in the 1820s. His
enthusiasm at the lush beauty of the Albanian costume must
have matched that of his favourite poet at the time, Byron. In a
letter to his mother from Epirus dated 12th November 1809,
Byron had marvelled at 'the Albanians, in their dresses, (the
most magnificent in the world, consisting of long, white kilt,
gold-worked cloak, crimson velvet gold laced jacket and waistcoat,
silver mounted pistols and daggers). . .';5 he admitted to
having succumbed to the temptation and acquired some of
these 'magnificent Albanian dresses. . . . They cost fifty
guineas each, and have so much gold, they would cost in England
two h ~ n d r e d 'L. ~es s fortunate, Delacroix must have contented
himself with borrowing them from the cosmopolitan
Monsieur Auguste as well as studying them in illustrated
travel books. The Athens water-colour is a case in point.
The two Albanians are, indeed, directly copied from plates I
and IV ofJoseph Cartwright's Selectzon of the Costume of Albania
and Greece, a book of full-page colour prints engraved by Robert
Have11 after Cartwright's originals, and published in London
in 1822 (Figs 35 and 37).' Delacroix here combines the two
LEE JOHNSON:'TWOSources of Oriental Motifs Copied by Delacroix', Gazette
des Beaux-Arts, 65, VI [1965], pp.163-67.
The N'orks of Lord Bvron. Letters and Journals, I, New York [1966], p.246,
No.131.
Ibid. Other travellers had shown equal interest. In his Lettres sur la .iforle et les
iles de Cirigo, Hydra et Zante, I, Paris [1808], p.96, A. L. CASTELLAN describes the
Albanian costume and includes an illustration of it (p1.21); in E. D. DODWELL:
A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, During the Years 18V1, 18V5 and
1806. 11, London [1819], pp. 134ff. we read: 'Others wear the small red skullcap,
and others the turban. . . . The Albanians or Arnauts . . . are extremely
fond of gold and silver ornaments in their dress . . . . They follow the fashion
set them by Hercules, of wearing pelisses; but instead of the lion's skin are
covered with the soft and fleecy ermine; . . . . The wealthier Arnauts have the
outer vest of velvet and gold, richly interwoven with elegant ornaments . . . .
The breeches which are white are tied below the knees with a coloured garter.
. .' Delacroix echoes such descriptions in the handwritten notations to a
pen drawing of a man and a woman in Albanian dress (Louvre, RF 9145 folio
42 recto): '11s on1 une calotte de feutre . . . cothurne de bure . . . (costume des Mirdites,
race albanaise). Les argyro Castrites [sic] dont les habzts igalent la neige en blamheur.' 'The legend on plate I reads: 'An Albanian. Oft the rich pipe he presses to his
lips (The Gally Knight)'. That on plate IV: 'An Albanian ofJannina. These
the firm squadrons of Albania's Lord. By the white vest and crimson cap (the
sign of waste and woe) they know the Albanian line (The Gally Knight)'.
Joseph Cartwright (1789-1829), from Dawlish in Devonshire, was a marine
painter attached to the British navy. He was appointed paymaster-general in
the British held Ionian Islands, where he was able to observe and make live
studies from Greek types, costumes and landscapes. These he published after
his return to England. Best known among his travel publications are his Views
zn the Ionian Islands.
individual Cartwright figures into a single composition, and
endows them with greater realism by integrating them into a
natural setting.
Although we know that Delacroix was familiar with yet
another major collection of illustrations from the Near East,
Louis Dupri's Voyage i Athines et i Constantinople, ou Collection de
Portraits, de Vues et de Comtumes Grecs. . . [1825], until now we
have had no indication that he knew- ~ a r i w r i ~ h t 'bso ok.
Neither Journal nor Correspondance mentions it; and unlike
Dupri, no Cartwright drawing or print was recorded among
his possessions in the posthumous sale of his e ~ t a t eO. ~nl y a
modest pencil drawing at the Louvre provides some supporting
evidence (Fig.40);9 displaying the simple, tracing outline
that Delacroix uses when copying the original exactly, it brings
together in balanced union, much like the Athens watercolour,
two more figures from two different Cartwright plates:
a red-shawled Arnaut standing full-face holding a gun, and an
Albanian woman in profile, facing him (Figs 41 and 42).1°
Delacroix, therefore, knew several plates from Cartwright. Did
he see the album at Pierret's? The Louvre drawing is, indeed,
done on the back of a cleaner's bill issued to Madame Pierret.
The bill also provides us with a relatively secure dating: a
printed fill-in date reads 'Paris, le , 182 ,
Thus, both the Louvre drawing and the Two Albanians are
almost certainly from the 1820s, a date corroborated by subject
matter and stvle as well.
Closest to the Two Albanians in size, format, conception and
style is the water-colour Two Greek soldiers by the sea (Fig.36)."
Here, however, there appears to be no direct printed prototype.
Two Greek soldiers is, rather, an example of the artist's
experimentation with compositional solutions and poses
(especially those that set the costumes off at their best) using
the characters originally borrowed from the prints. Just like
the two Albanians, the two Greeks are set within a landscape
remarkable for its rugged barrenness. Delacroix seems to have
deliberately chosen a setting that would match and reflect the
wild, indomitable nature of his figures. His source of inspiration
might have been Byron; in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage the
'4lbanian Suliots are a barbarous race, unrestrained in their
joys, fearsome in their wrath. They are the inhabitants of savage
lands, cave dwellers, on a par with wolves and vultures.
Brave and invincible, they are identified with natural forces as
they storm 'to the plain like the stream from the rock . . .'.I2
Just like Byron, Delacroix must have seen the Suliots as
modern primitives, embodiments of natural purity unspoiled
by civilisation. Being - as it was thought - the descendants of
the ancient Greeks, the Suliots must have also been considered
as a reflection of the pristine humanity of antiquity. Delacroix's
reaction, in 1832, to the Arabs of Algeria, a people that
he saw as 'wholly antique', is very similar: in their primitive
and rude simplicity, the Arabs, like the Suliots, were the mods
See NINA ATHANASSOGLO'MU:ore on Delacroix's Oriental Sources', THE BURLINGTON
MAGAZINE, CXXI [1979], p.587.
RF 10230, measuring 17 by 18 cm.
lo The Arnaut is from plate V: 'A Red-Shawled Arnaut. I ask not the pleasures
that riches supply. My Sabre shall win what the feeble must buy. Lord
Byron's Childe Harold. Canto 2'. The Albanian woman is from plate VIII:
'Albanian Female. She yields to one her person and her heart. Train'd to her
cage nor feels or wish to roam. Childe Harold. Canto 2'. RAYMOND ESCHOLIER:
Delacrotx. Peintre, Graveur, Ecriuain, I, Paris [1926], p.1 15, published a watercolour
version of the Red-Shawled Arnaut, formerly with the Marcel
Guirin collection (here Fig.39).
l1 In a London private collection. it measures 23.2 by 19.5 cm. See LEE
JOHNSON: Delacroix, exh. cat., Edinburgh International Festival [1964], No. 104,
Pl.51. I wish to thank Professor Johnson for bringing this water-colour to my
attention as well as for his useful suggestions on my script.
l2 BYRON: Poetical Works, Oxford University Press/London [1967], p.205: Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 11.