A Street in Tangiers

Mariano Fortuny Marsal

National Gallery of Art

Seven men sit or stand in a town street in front of a bone-brown stucco building in this horizontal watercolor painting. Light pours across the road from the right, making the surface glow parchment white. The building is close to us and takes up the left two-thirds of the composition. Its face is flat except for a wide, deeply shadowed arch, which is about twice the height of the standing person, and a shallowly projecting structure that encases the second story of the corner. This structure is pierced to create intricate tracery and is supported by corbels. Three people sit or recline against the building façade in the middle of the composition. They wear tattered clothing in ivory white, scarlet red, ultramarine blue, beige, and black. Their skin is painted in tones of ash white, and they have beards. Their eyes appear to be closed. One man hunches over a long staff across his lap, and the head of another man rests back against the wall, his mouth downturned and eyebrows gathered. The reclining person’s bare legs stretch long, and his slippers lie near bare feet as he props his head in one hand. A fourth man is wrapped in white cloth and stands looking at the trio, facing away from us. A fifth man perches atop a donkey, swaddled in pale peach and white fabric and huddled around a long rifle braced upright in front of him. Now we realize that the long staff the other man held is also the barrel of a rifle. A second pale donkey stands in profile facing our left in front of the mounted man, who looks down at a man who returns his gaze as he stands behind that second donkey. In the right third of the watercolor is a view down an alley-like street spanned occasionally with arches or walkways. People man tables set out in front of the buildings there and others look at the wares. Another man swathed in black fabric huddles near the corner of the building. The artist inscribed and dated the lower right corner of the watercolor, “A M Stewart son ami Fortuny 1869.”