the volume of poems Les Orientales and Delacroix contributed two paintings, The Massacre at Chios (1824) and Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Messolonghi (1826). By the nineteenth century this warped myth had developed into a perceived truth and each subsequent piece of information on North Africa validated, and in turn propagated this Oriental myth. European depiction of the harem was almost perpetually dependent on the Oriental myth. European male artists were unable to obtain access to the harem and so relied upon visits to brothels and their own imagination to conjure a fantasy image of the space. Research has shown that even first hand accounts by female artists and writers who had the opportunity to enter local harems were slightly embellished. These fantasy depictions regularly eroticized and objectified the spaces, see Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1876 Pool in a harem, for example. Eugène Delacroix had the benefit of physically visiting a harem in 1832, albeit very briefly. The European myth of the harem fantasy intensified in the nineteenth century with the ready availability of the book Arabian Nights (also known as Thousand and One Nights). Antoine Galland first translated it into French in 1717. The enormously popular book of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries painted a picture of a timeless fantasy world of exotic adventure. The influence of this tale on travelling artist's first hand absorption and interpretation of visual information is discussed in Mary Roberts's book Intimate Outsiders. Delacroix himself paralleled his experiences in North Africa to the Arabian Nights. In a letter to Alexis de Tocqueville several years after his trip he mentioned, "Never in my life have I observed anything more bizarre than the first sight of Tangier. It is a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights... A prodigious mix of races and costumes...This whole world moves about with an activity that seems feverish." 1847–1849 painting The second painting was created between 1847 and 1849 and currently resides at the Musee Fabre in Montpellier, France. The composition of the figures remains the same, however the women are now depicted as smaller figures and fade back into the background. The melody of gold, burnt umber, and red tones blending together creates a hazy, dreamlike reverie. Instead of leaving the scene the black slave is now lifting away the curtain to reveal the seated women to the viewer. The women on the left wears a lower plunging neckline