On his return trip from Morocco in 1832, Delacroix made a two-day stop in Algiers. This short stay was enough to fire his imagination and inspire Women of Algiers in their Apartment. The Orient in general and women of the harem in particular have inspired painters, poets and musicians in both ancient and modern times, and were central to Delacroix’s aesthetic ideas and artistic techniques.

Painters were the first to pave the way for the work’s posterity by skillfully presenting, revealing and analyzing its strengths. According to Renoir in 1897, “Once you have achieved that, you can sleep soundly.” Two years later, in his manifesto entitled From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, Paul Signac admired the intelligence of “the aesthetic nature of color” in the work.