This sheet of studies of Arab figures and a landscape undoubtedly belongs to one of Delacroix's most famous groups of watercolor drawings. Although the artist had produced several works with Orientalist subjects in the 1820s, it was his trip to North Africa in January of 1832 that apparently opened his eyes to all the stimulating pictorial possibilities of the Arabs and Jews of that land, their exotic traditions, and the light and color of their environment. Delacroix filled some half a dozen sketchbooks with graphite and watercolor drawings, attempting to capture quick images and notations of what for him represented the living and evocative remains of an antique world. He would use these sketches as a visual compendium of ideas from which to develop a large group of more finished works over the next several decades.

In certain distinct respects, the Raclin Murphy's Snite's sheet of studies closely resembles some of the pages from Delacroix's Moroccan sketchbooks, which are today in the Louvre. With a sparse use of underdrawing in graphite, the artist suggested a panoramic view of a landscape on the uppermost section of the sheet. Quickly added watercolor washes further define a view down from a hillside covered with foliage to a distant coastline and a broad area of sky beyond. Below are rapidly sketched-in figures of Arabs wearing robes; the more developed of these figures is seated, possibly at a campsite, with a horse beside him. The studies convey an intimacy and immediacy characteristic of the Louvre's precious 1832 sketchbook pages. In addition to the Delacroix studio stamp at the lower right, there is the faint remnant of a stamp resembling the Degas studio stamp at the lower left, suggesting that the drawing was at one time a part of Degas's collection.

from Spiro, Nineteenth-Century French Drawings (Notre Dame, 2007)