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

173. Louvre, inv. no. RF 25.981, reproduced in Prat, vol. 1, 253-54, cat. no. 541. Prat notes that while the figure at the center of the drawing appears in Eastern Merchants, a fragment of which survives, the notes most likely refer to the lost pendant Western Merchants ("toutes les races mauresques et africaines un gout de couleur exquis les plus riches etoffes").

174. While Chasseriau generalizes the facial features of the central merchant offering his wares to the porters on the quay in the finished composition, turning him into a pale-skinned Moor or perhaps an Indian, which is how Gautier identified him, in the Louvre drawing he is clearly more North African in appearance. The ethnographic specificity of his face in the preliminary drawing ties the Commerce murals to Chasseriau's racial investigations. Another drawing, done in pencil and watercolor, that recorded the artist's thinking for Eastern Merchants, confirms the Africanness of his physiognomy. The drawing is in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., reproduced in Louis-Antoine Prat, Theodore Chasseriau, 1819-1856: Dessins conserves en dehors du Louvre (Paris: Galerie de Bayser, 1988), 20, cat. no. 112. For additional preparatory drawings for the Commerce Brings Peoples Together murals, see Prat, vol. 1, 253-59.

175. Chasseriau, 232.

176. Peltre, 231.

177. Frederic Chasseriau, Vie de l'amiral Duperre (Paris, 1848), vol. 2, quoted in Peltre, 231: "securite rendue a la Mediterranee peut-etre destinee a redevenir le centre du mouvement politique et commercial du monde."

178. Galibert (as in n. 68), 568: "Le commerce d'Algerie a pris une importance qui sera de plus en plus progressive et qui merite de fixer l'attention de la metropole."

179. Quetin, 86: "En 1831, l'Algerie n'avait recu que 123 navires de France. Cette annee il en est arrive pres de 1900 jaugeant environ 154000 tonneaux."

180. William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers (London: R. J. Kennett, 1826), 56-57.

181. Edmond de Pellissier de Reynaud, "Des diverses races qui peuplent l'Algerie," Revue de l'Orient 6 (1845): 347-61, cited in Lorcin, 68.

182. Tocqueville, 1991 (as in n. 10), 849-56.

183. Quetin, 113: "c'etait donc avec les Kabyles qu'il fallait s'empresser d'etablir les liens naturels de commerce et d'echange, et creer des interets directes et positifs, comme firent les Carthaginois et les romains avec les Berberes."

184. Adolphe J. C. A. Dureau de la Malle, L'Algerie (Histoire des guerres des Romains, des Byzantins et des Vandales.... (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1852), 38.

185. Anthony Thrall Sullivan, Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, France and Algeria, 1784-1849: Politics, Power, and the Good Society (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1983), 107.

186. Prat, vol. 1, 253, cat. no. 539.

187. Quetin, 85: "Tout est en mouvement: le commerce de l'Algerie, deja interessant pour la France et le reste de l'Europe, grandira bientot par la pacification appuyee sur la force."