Auguste Delacroix

Auguste Delacroix wasn’t some starving artist—he was a working draftsman who got paid to sketch exotic scenes for rich travelers. He never left France, but he kept a stack of Moroccan postcards on his desk and turned them into watercolors that look like postcards themselves. His “Tanger” (1850) is the kind of picture you could frame and put on your wall; it’s not trying to be deep, it’s just a sunny afternoon by the harbor, done in 20 minutes while the light stayed right.