 In his diary entry for 19 June 1854 Delacroix mentioned this subject as one of several Morocco-themed works he was then working on, but even so he only seems to have begun "Arab Horses" around two years later in 1856.He completed it on 14 June 1860, putting thirty years between the stallion-fight and the work's completion.He produced the work for Estienne, the same art dealer as "Horses Leaving the Sea", and so the two works are usually considered as a pair.