In this picture, taken somewhere in Algeria at the time when it was already a French colony, a game of chess is quietly taking place against a backdrop of woven mats and blankets. An ancient kingly pursuit in the East, chess became a fashionable European pastime in the nineteenth century. The first international tournament was held in London in 1851. Eugène Delacroix (1798 - 1863), the leading French Romantic painter, travelled to north Africa in 1832 and he later painted his own Arab Chess Players (now in the National Gallery of Scotland).