The Women of Algiers by Eugene Delacroix depicts three Algerian concubines lounging in their harem accompanied by their black slave. In true Orientalist style, Delacroix clothes the women in luxurious fabrics and surrounds them with lavish rugs. Decorative tiles surround the women, as the light source highlights the languid form of one subject, eyes closed in an opium-induced bliss.

None of the women make eye contact with the viewer, either out of submission or disinterest. The viewer takes on the role of a dispassionate observer, bringing to an Eastern-style painting a host of Western preconceptions and inclinations. The scene might appear primitive to some, lavish to others. To the viewer, the women could appear modest and plain, or strikingly beautify and exotic. The function of Orientalist paintings in the 19^th century is nebulous. Most artists sought out to document French or British colonial prowess. Some sought variation in subject matter and the excitement of travel. Few tried to depict the indigènes, or native people, in an autonomous fashion.

Delacroix paints The Women of Algiers with masculinist ambitions. Bringing the full force of French colonial power into a previously private locale - the harem - Delacroix observed the kept women in the name of ethnographic investigation to justify colonial expansion. He portrays the Eastern women as being first dominated by the Eastern man, the invisible tyrant who locked them into the room, and then by the Western man, who succeeded in breaching the confines of harem to document their submission. The resounding message of the painting is Western domination.

Edward Said writes later about the East/West binary and the misrepresentation of the East by the West. Delacroix best illustrates this concept in The Women of Algiers. He portrays Algerian women as primitive, dependent not only on a man’s benevolence, but also on the pleasure of opiates, and submissive. This was the image that was sent to Paris’ Salon to represent the Orient. This and many other paintings were integral in maintaining support for the war and justifying the horrors and violence of French colonial rule.