Ali-Ben-Hamet, Caliph of Constantinople (1845)

Théodore Chassériau: Ali-Ben-Hamet, Caliph of Constantinople 

and Chief of the Haractas, Followed by his Escort

In the same Salon [1845] appeared a painting which is always compared to Delacroix's Sultan of Morocco: Théodore Chassériau's equestrian Portrait of Kalif Ali-Ben Hamet (or Ahmed) Followed by His Escort. Indeed, in the Rochester Orientalism catalogue, Chassériau's painting is described as "inevitably recalling Delacroix's portrait," although more "detailed and portrait-like." But Chassériau's is actually a very different image, serving a radically different purpose. It is actually a commissioned portrait of an Algerian chieftain friendly to the French, who, with his entourage, was being wined and dined by the French authorities in Paris at the time.

Ali-Ben Ahmed, in short, unlike the uncooperative and defeated Abd-el-Rahman, was a leader who triumphed as a cat's-paw of the French. The relationship between the two works, then, is much more concrete than some vague bond created by their compositional similarity – they are actually quite different in their structure – or the obfuscating umbrella category of Orientalism. For it is a concrete relationship of opposition or antagonism, political and ideological, that is at issue here. Indeed, if we consider all the other representations of North African subjects in the Salon of 1845 – and there were quite a few – merely as examples of Orientalism, we inevitably miss their significance as political documents at a time of particularly active military intervention in North Africa. In other words, in the case of imagery directly related to political, diplomatic, and military affairs in the inspirational territory of Orientalism, the very notion of "Orientalism" itself in the visual arts is simply a category of obfuscation, masking important distinctions under the rubric of the picturesque, supported by the illusion of the real. [Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," in Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, Joanne Morra and Marquand Smith, eds., pp. 19-36, quote above from p. 33.]