in the relatively clothed forms of the females and the title of the painting itself, as it is devoid of the objectifying terms odalisque or harem. Delacroix's Women of Algiers does not depict an overtly eroticized version of the Oriental female, as other artists did, such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' salacious depiction in his 1814 painting Grande Odalisque. Although there is a desire for realism to evoke the decorative mood, the work fails to extend the desire for realism to the women themselves, and the social customs of the harem. There is almost no narrative in the stagnant space. The women are cloistered together, not engaging with one another. The challenging stare of the women on the left reflects hostility towards the permeation of the private space. Aside from this glance there is no depiction of the nineteenth century social customs of the harems of elite Algerian culture. Ultimately Delacroix's stolen glance into the Algerian harem provided him with little visual information to create a realistic image. With these gaps in visual information Delacroix fills the voids with his own European interpretation, resulting in a subtler version of the fantasy female. With the exposed décolletage, loose unbounded clothing and languid poses, Delacroix's Algerian females are still situated in the European oriental dream. The addition of stereotypical Orientalist motifs, such as the narghile pipe, charcoal burner, and the odalisques pose. Together they create a fictional image that parallels the European fantasy of the harem more than reality. The nineteenth century European viewer's connotations of the "narghile pipe" with smoking hashish or opium, as well as the connotations of the loose unbound clothing to sexual immorality, added to this Western fantasy. History The French conquest of Algeria started in 1830 and affected France's relationship with nearby countries, such as Morocco. Towards the end of 1831 King Louis Phillipe sent a diplomatic party to Morocco in order to establish friendly relations and negotiate a treaty with the Sultan. He assigned the young diplomat Charles de Mornay. At that time it was common to take artists along, in order to visually document the journey. Delacroix joined the diplomatic party by chance through social connections. Previously, when Delacroix was studying under Pierre Guérin, he had become friends with a fellow student, Henri Duponchel, who had recently become director of scenic design at the Paris Opera (and would later become its managing director). Duponchel was in the