Turc fumant, assis sur un divan

A man in a white turban sits back on a divan with a long pipe in his hand, a red cloak spread around him over a gold-embroidered jacket, and a sheathed blade propped at the end of the seat. The canvas is small, about 25 by 30 centimetres, and when it was painted is an open question. The Louvre files it at the end of the 1830s, after Delacroix's journey to North Africa, and in the same record notes that it was probably painted in 1825. That earlier date would place it in the months when he and his English friend Richard Parkes Bonington shared a studio in Paris. It has been shown and published beside Bonington's own small Turkish figures. The Louvre also keeps a sheet of four pencil studies of a Turk's head made for this picture.