Muley-Abd-Err-Rahmann, sultan du Maroc sortant de son palais de Mequinez

On 22 March 1832, Delacroix stood in Meknes and watched the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Abd-er-Rahman, ride out from his palace surrounded by guards and officers. He was there almost by accident, attached to a French diplomatic mission sent by King Louis-Philippe to keep Morocco calm after France had seized neighbouring Algeria. That journey changed Delacroix, flooding his later work with North African light and colour. He waited more than a decade before turning this particular memory into a large painting, which he showed at the Paris Salon of 1845. The Sultan sits high and still on his horse at the centre, raised above the crowd, the great gate of Meknes behind him just as Delacroix had noted it years before.