By the sword and the plow: Theodore Chasseriau's Cour des Comptes murals and Algeria

78. The "Galerie d'Alger" at the Louvre, a venue for the exhibition of artifacts brought from Algeria, was envisioned as early as 1833. See Dondin-Payre 1994b (as in n. 77), 16. In 1846, Amable Ravoisie, the architect working for the Commission Scientifique, noted that objects gathered from Constantine were destined for a "musee special d'antiquites algeriennes" at the Louvre. See Ravoisie, Exploration scientifique de l'Algerie pendant les annees 1840, 1841, 1842: Beaux-arts, architecture et sculpture, 3 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1846-51), vol. 1, 7. The first mention of a permanent installation of North African antiquities in the archives of the Louvre, in a report dated December 27, 1847, occurred on the same day that Abd-el Kader, the leader of the Algerian resistance, surrendered. The official inauguration of the Galerie d'Alger, however, was held on July 8, 1850. I am grateful to Francoise Guillou for allowing me to consult her unpublished study of the constitution, collection, and eventual dispersion of the Galerie d'Alger at the Louvre, "Histoire du Louvre: La Galerie d'Alger," Monographie de Museologie de l'Ecole du Louvre (2002).

79. The first French painter to recognize North Africa's value as a "living antiquity," Delacroix made an analogy between the drapery folds of the African burnoose to those of classical togas in antique statuary. See the introduction by Barthelemy Jobert to Eugene Delacroix, Souvenirs d'un voyage dans le Maroc, ed. Laure Beaumont-Maillet, Jobert, and Sophie Join-Lambert (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 62-63. The sartorial analogy became a common theme in analyses of Algeria, as in Honore Jean-Pierre Fisquet, Histoire de l'Algerie, depuis les temps anciens jusqu'a nos jours (Paris, 1842), 88-89, where Fisquet compares the haik and the burnoose, respectively, to the Roman toga and pallium. In 1846, Gautier wrote of Algerian natives: "ces stoiques barbares, ces descendants des Carthaginois et des Numides, drapes dans leurs toges romaines, avec leur gestes et leurs poses de statues...." (these stoic barbarians, descendants of Carthaginians and Numidians, with their statuesque gestures and poses....). See Theophile Gautier, "Theatres--Porte Saint-Martin.--La Juive de Constantine, melodrama en cinq actes et six tableaux," La Presse (Nov. 16, 1846), 2.

80. On Chasseriau's voyage to Italy in 1840, see Louis-Antoine Prat, "Theodore Chasseriau: Un sejour italien (1840-1841)," in D'Ingres a Degas: Les artistes francais a Rome, ed. Olivier Bonfait (Rome: Academie de France/Electa, 2003), 117-25. In a letter to his brother dated Sept. 9, 1840 (reprinted in Bonfait, 119-20), Chasseriau wrote that Rome seemed to him like a "tomb."

81. Testifying to the double duty performed by men such as Captain Adolphe Delamare in Algeria, F. de Clarac, the curator of antiquities at the Louvre, explained why certain of the soldier-archaeologist's drawings were little more than rough sketches: "vu l'etat hostile du pays et le peu de surete des excursions, il fallait pour ainsi dire tenir sa crayon d'une main et son epee ou son pistolet de l'autre...." (considering the ongoing state of the hostilities and the lack of security on the sorties, it was necessary to hold a pencil in one hand and a sword or pistol in the other....). See Clarac, Musee de Sculpture antique et moderne, ou description historique et graphique du Louvre (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1846), vol. 2, pt. 2, app., 1251.