Two Studies of an Indian from Calcutta, Seated and Standing

In 1823 Delacroix was 25 and had not yet been out of France. His Asia came from prints, from theatre costume and from the props in other painters' studios. Then a man from Calcutta, the city the British ran as the capital of their Indian empire, sat for him in Paris, and Delacroix put him on one canvas twice, once seated and once standing in a red turban and a white tunic with a crimson collar. The two figures are close enough to compare and separate enough to study one at a time. He is working out how a person actually carries clothes he had only ever seen drawn. The same sitter turns up on a second canvas from these sessions, standing in two more positions, and Morocco, the journey that finally showed him any of this in life, was still nine years off.