The Cherifas

'The Cherifas' (1884) belongs to the core of Benjamin-Constant's Orientalist production, painted a decade after his 1872 journey to Morocco that transformed his art. 'Cherifa' refers to a female descendant of the Prophet Muhammad — a woman of spiritual and social distinction in Islamic North African society. Depicting such a figure allowed Benjamin-Constant to combine the visual fascination of Moroccan costume and setting with the suggestion of an elevated female subject, moving beyond the passive odalisque of earlier French Orientalism. By 1884 he was exhibiting regularly at the Salon and building his collection of Moroccan props, costumes, and objects that he used to maintain the illusion of authenticity in Paris. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne holds this work in one of the better regional collections of French academic Orientalism outside Paris.

Benjamin-Constant renders the elaborate fabric of the Moroccan costume with virtuoso attention to the contrasting textures of embroidered silk, heavy drape, and metallic jewelry. The figure is placed against a suggested architectural setting with patterned tilework — Moorish architecture rendered in flat decorative panels. The face is given maximum psychological presence within the opulent setting.