Eugène Fromentin

Template:Infobox artist Eugène Fromentin (; 24 October 1820Template:Snd27 August 1876) was a French painterTemplate:Sfn and writer.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn

His books include ("The Masters of Past Time", 1876),Template:Sfn 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 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."Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn

Gallery

• Template:Resizediv
• Arabian Encampment, 1848
  Arabian Encampment, 1848
• North African Landscape, 1847 ~ 1848
  North African Landscape, 1847 ~ 1848
• Boerenerf met vee [Farmyard with livestock], 1849
  Boerenerf met vee [Farmyard with livestock], 1849
• Arabs Watering Their Horses, ca. 1850
  Arabs Watering Their Horses, ca. 1850
• Arab woman, 1852
  Arab woman, 1852
• Enterrement maure [Moorish burial], 1853
  Enterrement maure [Moorish burial], 1853
• La rue Bab-el-Gharbi, à El-Aghouat, 1859Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
  La rue Bab-el-Gharbi, à El-Aghouat, 1859Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• Kabyle Shepherd, 1861
  Kabyle Shepherd, 1861
• Cavaliers arabes ou la rencontre [Arab Horsemen or the Encounter], 1862
  Cavaliers arabes ou la rencontre [Arab Horsemen or the Encounter], 1862
• File:Eugène fromentin, caccia al falcone in algeria, la corsa, 1863 (cropped).JPG
• Windstorm on the Esparto Plains of the Sahara, 1864
  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
  Coup de vent sur les plaines d'alfa [Gust of Wind on the Plains of Alfa], 1864
• Hunting Heron, Algeria, 1865
  Hunting Heron, Algeria, 1865
• An Encampment in the Atlas Mountains, 1865
  An Encampment in the Atlas Mountains, 1865
• Standard Bearer, 1860 ~ 1865
  Standard Bearer, 1860 ~ 1865
• Arabs on the Way to the Pastures of the Tell, 1866
  Arabs on the Way to the Pastures of the Tell, 1866
• Before the Race – Fantasia or The Halt in the Desert, 1867
  Before the Race – Fantasia or The Halt in the Desert, 1867
• L'Incendie [The Fire], 1867
  L'Incendie [The Fire], 1867
• Centaures, 1868
  Centaures, 1868
• Halte de cavaliers arabes dans la forêt [Arab Horsemen Resting in the Forest], 1868
  Halte de cavaliers arabes dans la forêt [Arab Horsemen Resting in the Forest], 1868
• Crossing the Ford, Algeria, 1869
  Crossing the Ford, Algeria, 1869
• Une Fantasia [A Fantasy] – Algeria, 1869
  Une Fantasia [A Fantasy] – Algeria, 1869
• Les tombeaux des Califes au Caire [The Tombs of the Caliphs in Cairo], ca. 1870
  Les tombeaux des Califes au Caire [The Tombs of the Caliphs in Cairo], ca. 1870
• Nil çayı (Turkish) [Nile Tea], 1870
  Nil çayı (Turkish) [Nile Tea], 1870
• Arabs, 1871
  Arabs, 1871
• On the Nile, Near Philae, 1871
  On the Nile, Near Philae, 1871
• Orientals [Egyptian Females], 1872
  Orientals [Egyptian Females], 1872
• Campement dans le Sahara [Campsite in the Sahara], 1872
  Campement dans le Sahara [Campsite in the Sahara], 1872
• The Banks of the Nile, 1874
  The Banks of the Nile, 1874
• Un ravin : souvenir d'Algérie [A Ravine: Souvenir of Algeria], 1875
  Un ravin : souvenir d'Algérie [A Ravine: Souvenir of Algeria], 1875
• Cavalier peint en Algérie [Painted Rider in 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
  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
  At the Well, 1875
• Un Souvenir d'Esneh [A memory of Esneh], 1876
  Un Souvenir d'Esneh [A memory of Esneh], 1876
• Le Simoun [The Simoun], 1876
  Le Simoun [The Simoun], 1876
• Horses Watering in a River, undated
  Horses Watering in a River, undated
• Bedouins Watering Their Horses, undated
  Bedouins Watering Their Horses, undated
• Moroccan Horsemen at the Foot of the Chiffra Cliffs, undated
  Moroccan Horsemen at the Foot of the Chiffra Cliffs, undated
• Head of an Old Woman, undated
  Head of an Old Woman, undated
• The Boar Hunt, undated
  The Boar Hunt, undated
• Départ pour la chasse [Departure for the hunt], undated
  Départ pour la chasse [Departure for the hunt], undated
• On the Nile, undated
  On the Nile, undated
• Arab Skirmish, undated
  Arab Skirmish, undated
• Le repos des chameaux [The Camels Rest], undated
  Le repos des chameaux [The Camels Rest], undated

See also

• List of Orientalist artists
• Orientalism

Bibliography

Inline references

• Template:Free access Template:LCCN; Template:ISBN; Template:OCLC, Template:OCLC search link.

• Retrieved July 27, 2004. Template:LCCN; Template:Catalog lookup link; Template:OCLC.

See Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910–1911).
1. Template:Free access
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• Retrieved October 15, 2024. Template:OCLC, Template:OCLC search link, Template:OCLC search link, and Template:OCLC search link.

1. Template:Free access
2. Template:Free access
3. Template:Free access

• Template:LCCN; Template:OCLC.

1. Template:Free access
3. Template:Free access

• Template:BnF; Template:OCLC, Template:OCLC, Template:OCLC search link, and Template:OCLC (1891 & 2012 re-prints).

• Retrieved October 15, 2024. Template:LCCN, Template:LCCN; Template:Catalog lookup link, Template:Catalog lookup link; Template:OCLC, Template:OCLC, Template:OCLC search link, Template:OCLC search link, Template:OCLC search link, and Template:OCLC search link.

See Gazette des Beaux-Arts
1. Gallica. Template:Free access
2. UC Boulder. Template:Free access
3. Template:Free access
4. Template:Free access

• Template:Free access

• Template:LCCN; Template:ISBN; Template:OCLC (e-book).

General references: works by Eugène Fromentin in English translation

• "A Critic's Program" and "A Letter to a Young Artist" in Realism and Tradition in Art, 1848-1900: Sources and Documents, edited by Linda Nochlin, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966, pp. 19–25; reprinted from the Mary Caroline Robbins translation of Gonse (1888).
• Between Sea and Sahara: An Algerian Journal, translation by Blake Robinson of Une Anée dans le Sahel (1859), Ohio University Press, 1999; reissued in 2004 by Tauris Parke Paperbacks with the subtitle An Orientalist Adventure.
• Template:OCLC.
• . Reprint by Soho Book Company (1986).
• "The Isle of Ré: An Unpublished Fragment" in Eugène Fromentin, Painter and Writer by Louis Gonse, translated by Mary Caroline Robbins, Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1888, pp. 251–271; various other quotations, letters, and excerpts by Fromentin, translated by Robbins, appear throughout the book.
• The Masters of Past Time, or Criticism on the Old Flemish & Dutch Painters, uncredited translation of Les Maîtres d'autrefois (1876), New York: E.P. Dutton, 1913.
• The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland, translation by Mrs. Mary C. Robbins of Les Maîtres d'autrefois (1876), Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1882.

General references: writings about Fromentin in English

• Bales, Richard. Persuasion in the French Personal Novel: Studies of Chateaubriand, Constant, Balzac, Nerval, and Fromentin, Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1997.
• Beaume, Georges. Fromentin, translated from the French by Frederic Taber Cooper, New York: Stokes, 1913.
• Christin, Anne-Marie, and Berrong, Richard M. "Space and Convention in Eugène Fromentin: The Algerian Experience", New Literary History, vol. 15, no. 3, Spring, 1984, pp. 559-574.
• Evans, Arthur R., Jr.. The Literary Art of Eugène Fromentin: A Study in Style and Motif, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.
• "Eugene Fromentin", The Art Amateur, vol. 12, no. 1, Dec., 1884, p. 9.
• "Fromentin, Eugène", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, published online 31 October 2011.
• Gill, Hélène. "Eugene Fromentin and the Experience of the Desert: Self-quest in the Other's Territory," Chapter 3 in The Language of French Orientalist Painting, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.
• Gillet, Louis. "Eugène Fromentin" in The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909.
• Gonse, Louis. Eugène Fromentin, Painter and Writer, translated by Mary Caroline Robbins, Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1888.
• Harris, Frank. "Eugéne Fromentin: The Painter-Writer", Chapter XIV in Latest Contemporary Portraits, New York: The Macaulay Company, 1927.
• Hartman, Elwood. Three Nineteenth-Century French Writer/Artists and the Maghreb: The Literary and Artistic Depictions of North Africa by Théophile Gautier, Eugène Fromentin, and Pierre Loti, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1994.
• Kaplan, Judith. "Eugéne Fromentin (1820-1876)" in Orientalist Writers, edited by Coeli Fitzpatrick and Dwayne A. Tunstall, Detroit : Gale Cengage Learning, 2012.
• Magill, Frank N., editor. "Dominique by Eugéne Fromentin" in Masterplots: 2010 Plot Stories & Essay Reviews from the World's Fine Literature, Revised Edition, volume 3, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1976.
• Mickel, Emanuel J. Eugène Fromentin, Twayne's World Authors Series 640, Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1981.
• Schapiro, Meyer. "Eugene Fromentin as Critic" in Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist and Society, Selected Papers, New York: George Braziller, 1994.
• Thompson, James P. W. "Fromentin, Eugène(-Samuel-Auguste)", Grove Art Online, published online 2003.
• Wright, Barbara. "Eugène Fromentin's 'Portrait de Jeune Femme' and the Possible Identification of Its Sources", The Burlington Magazine, vol. 116, no. 854, May, 1974, pp. 274–275.
• Wright, Barbara. "A drawing for 'Hodna': an early painting by Eugène Fromentin," The Burlington Magazine, vol. 155, no. 1322, May, 2013, pp. 324-325.
• Wright, Barbara. Eugène Fromentin: A Life in Art and Letters, Peter Lang, 2000.
• Wright, Barbara. "Eugène Fromentin (1820-76)" in Key Writers on Art, volume I, edited by Chris Murray, New York: Routledge, 2003.

External links

• Fromentin, Eugène at Dicitonary of Art Historians
• Encyclopædia Britannica
• Template:Internet Archive author
• www.eugenefromentin.org Works by Eugène Fromentin