Le jour des funérailles - Scène du Maroc

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant's Le jour des funérailles — Scène du Maroc (1889) depicts a Moroccan funeral scene, part of the Orientalist subject matter that Benjamin-Constant had developed through his travels to Morocco in the 1870s and that sustained his international reputation. Benjamin-Constant was one of the leading French Orientalist painters — alongside Gérôme and Fromentin — and his Moroccan funeral scenes combined ethnographic observation with the compositional drama and chromatic intensity that the genre demanded. The painting is in the Petit Palais.

The funeral procession is organized through a Moroccan street or square, using strong North African light to create dramatic contrasts of illuminated surfaces and deep shadow. Benjamin-Constant's palette is characteristically warm — ochres, whites, and earth tones of North African architecture — with figures in mourning white creating the compositional movement.