Les Chérifas

Les Chérifas (1884), held in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, depicts sharifa — women who are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and therefore hold a specific social status in Moroccan Islamic society. Benjamin-Constant's use of this precise social category in the title, rather than the generic Orientalist tag 'odalisques' or 'harem women,' reflects his deeper engagement with Moroccan social reality than most French Orientalists achieved. He had spent time enough in Morocco to understand social distinctions within Muslim communities that escaped casual visitors. By 1884, more than a decade after his Moroccan journey, Benjamin-Constant was producing more reflective works that drew on accumulated memory and sketches rather than the immediate visual excitement of the early 1870s canvases. The Pau museum, located in the Pyrenean city close to the Spanish border, held collections of Orientalist and regional painting and the acquisition reflects the genre's continued commercial and institutional success in provincial French museums through the 1880s.

The composition arranges multiple female figures in a domestic interior setting, using layered planes of recession to create spatial depth. Benjamin-Constant applies rich, saturated color to the women's garments and jewelry while modulating the architectural background toward cooler, more neutral tones to ensure the figures advance visually.