#orientalism

Sketches like this came out of a few months tagging along with a French mission to North Africa, according to Wikipedia — notebooks filled up on the trip, then the big painting worked out later, back home. One journey he kept mining for years afterwards.

Apparently this is a small preparatory sketch for a bigger, finished painting - the kind of quick study made to work out a mood before committing to the real canvas. I couldn't track down much more about it.

The story behind it came from a Byron play about an Assyrian king who, with defeat coming, has everything he owns destroyed in front of him rather than let anyone else have it. Apparently the critics went for it hard when it was first shown, and it did him no favours with the officials who handed out state commissions.

There's more than one of these — supposedly a first version came a few years earlier, and the garden behind was added here by an assistant rather than the man whose name is on it. He'd never been anywhere near the world he's painting; it's said the whole scene comes out of travel books and other people's prints, which was normal for this kind of picture.