Eugène Fromentin

Eugène Fromentin (French pronunciation: [øʒɛn fʁɔmɑ̃tɛ̃]; 24 October 1820 – 27 August 1876) was a French painter^[1] and writer.^[2]

Eugène Fromentin
Born	(1820-10-24)24 October 1820 La Rochelle, France
Died	27 August 1876(1876-08-27) (aged 55) La Rochelle, France
Nationality	French
Education	Louis Cabat
Known for	Painter, Novelist, Travel literature, Art critic
Movement	Orientalist
Signature

Life and career

He was born in La Rochelle. After leaving school he studied for some years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters of Algeria, having been able, while quite young, to visit the land and people that suggested the subjects of most of his works, and to store his memory as well as his portfolio with the picturesque and characteristic details of North African life. His first great success was produced at the Salon of 1847, by the Gorges de la Chiffa. In 1849, he was awarded a medal of the second class.^[3]

In 1852, he paid a second visit to Algeria, accompanying an archaeological mission, and then completed that minute study of the scenery of the country and of the habits of its people which enabled him to give to his after-work the realistic accuracy that comes from intimate knowledge.^[3]

His books include Les Maîtres d'autrefois ("The Masters of Past Time", 1876),^[4] an influential appreciation of Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Baroque of the Old Masters of Belgium and Holland, Dominique and A Summer in the Sahara. In Les Maîtres d'autrefois he deals with the complexity of paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt and others, their style and the artists' emotions at the time of creating their masterpieces. He is also one of the first "art critics" to approach the subject of The Old Masters from a personal point of view – being a painter himself. He also puts the work in a social, political and economic context, as the Dutch Golden Age painting develops shortly after Holland won its independence. Bernhard Berenson wrote of the book, "I carry Fromentin with me, and read him each evening about the pictures I have seen that he criticizes. He is the only writer on pictures worth his salt, but I do not always agree with him."^[5]

Fromentin, who maintained that "art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible," was much influenced in style by Eugène Delacroix. His works are distinguished by striking composition, great dexterity of handling and brilliancy of colour. In them is given with great truth and refinement the unconscious grandeur of barbarian and animal attitudes and gestures. His later works, however, show signs of an exhausted vein and of an exhausted spirit, accompanied or caused by physical enfeeblement.^[3]

But it must be observed that Fromentin's paintings show only one side of a genius that was perhaps even more felicitously expressed in literature, though with less profusion. Dominique, first published in the Revue des deux mondes in 1862, and dedicated to George Sand, is remarkable among the fiction of the century for delicate and imaginative observation and for emotional earnestness.^[3]

Fromentin's other literary works include Visites artistiques (1852); Simples Pèlerinages (1856); Un été dans le Sahara (1857); Une année dans le Sahel (1858). In 1876 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy. He died suddenly at La Rochelle on 27 August 1876.^[3]

Gallery

• Selection of works
• 
  Arabian Encampment, 1848
• 
  North African Landscape, 1847 ~ 1848
• 
  Boerenerf met vee [Farmyard with livestock], 1849
• 
  Arabs Watering Their Horses, ca. 1850
• 
  Arab woman, 1852
• 
  Enterrement maure [Moorish burial], 1853
• 
  La rue Bab-el-Gharbi, à El-Aghouat, 1859^[6][7]
• 
  Kabyle Shepherd, 1861
• 
  Cavaliers arabes ou la rencontre [Arab Horsemen or the Encounter], 1862
• 
• 
  Windstorm on the Esparto Plains of the Sahara, 1864
• 
  Coup de vent sur les plaines d'alfa [Gust of Wind on the Plains of Alfa], 1864
• 
  Hunting Heron, Algeria, 1865
• 
  An Encampment in the Atlas Mountains, 1865
• 
  Standard Bearer, 1860 ~ 1865
• 
  Arabs on the Way to the Pastures of the Tell, 1866
• 
  Before the Race – Fantasia or The Halt in the Desert, 1867
• 
  L'Incendie [The Fire], 1867
• 
  Centaures, 1868
• 
  Halte de cavaliers arabes dans la forêt [Arab Horsemen Resting in the Forest], 1868
• 
  Crossing the Ford, Algeria, 1869
• 
  Une Fantasia [A Fantasy] – Algeria, 1869
• 
  Les tombeaux des Califes au Caire [The Tombs of the Caliphs in Cairo], ca. 1870
• 
  Nil çayı (Turkish) [Nile Tea], 1870
• 
  Arabs, 1871
• 
  On the Nile, Near Philae, 1871
• 
  Orientals [Egyptian Females], 1872
• 
  Campement dans le Sahara [Campsite in the Sahara], 1872
• 
  The Banks of the Nile, 1874
• 
  Un ravin : souvenir d’Algérie [A Ravine: Souvenir of Algeria], 1875
• 
  Cavalier peint en Algérie [Painted Rider in Algeria], 1875
• 
  La caravane (scène de la vie nomade des Larbaâ Laghouat) [The Caravan (Scene From the Nomadic Life of the Larbaâ Laghouat)], 1875
• 
  At the Well, 1875
• 
  Un Souvenir d'Esneh [A memory of Esneh], 1876
• 
  Le Simoun [The Simoun], 1876
• 
  Horses Watering in a River, undated
• 
  Bedouins Watering Their Horses, undated
• 
  Moroccan Horsemen at the Foot of the Chiffra Cliffs, undated
• 
  Head of an Old Woman, undated
• 
  The Boar Hunt, undated
• 
  Départ pour la chasse [Departure for the hunt], undated
• 
  On the Nile, undated
• 
  Arab Skirmish, undated
• 
  Le repos des chameaux [The Camels Rest], undated

See also

• List of Orientalist artists
• Orientalism