French painter
Eugene Fromentin
|
---|
![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fromentin.jpg/220px-Eug%C3%A8ne_Fromentin.jpg) |
Born
| (
1820-10-24
)
24 October 1820
|
---|
Died
| 27 August 1876
(1876-08-27)
(aged 55)
La Rochelle
|
---|
Nationality
| French
|
---|
Education
| Louis Cabat
|
---|
Known for
| Painter
, Author
|
---|
Movement
| Orientalist
|
---|
Eugene Fromentin
(
French pronunciation:
[ø??n
f??m??t??]
; 24 October 1820 – 27 August 1876) was a French painter and writer,
[1]
now better remembered for his writings.
Life
[
edit
]
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.
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.
His books include
Les Maitres d'autrefois
("The Masters of Past Time", 1876), 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 Maitres 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. The book developed from articles for journals. Meyer Schapiro has written an essay on Fromentin, "Eugene Fromentin as Critic".
[3]
Works
[
edit
]
Among his more important works are:
- La Place de la Breche
[4]
a
Constantine
(1849)
- Enterrement Maure
(1853)
- Bateleurs negres
(1859)
- Audience chez un chalife
(1859)
- Berger kabyle
(1859)
- Courriers arabes
(1861)
- Bivouac arabe
(1863)
- Chasse au faucon
(1863)
- Fauconnier arabe
(now at Luxembourg) (1863)
- Chasse au heron
(1865)
- Voleurs de nuit
(1867)
- Centaures et arabes attaques par une lionne
(1868)
- Halte de muletiers
(1869)
- Le Nil
(1875)
- Un souvenir d'Esneh
(1875)
- Selection of works
-
Hunting heron, Algeria
, 1865
-
Arabs
, 1871
-
Moroccan Horsemen at the Foot of the Chiffra Cliffs
-
Un Souvenir d'Esneh
, 1876
-
Windstorm on the Esparto Plains of the Sahara
, 1864
Fromentin, who maintained that "art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible", was much influenced in style by
Eugene 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.
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.
Fromentin's other literary works are
Visites artistiques
(1852);
Simples Pelerinages
(1856);
Un ete dans le Sahara
(1857);
Une annee dans le Sahel
(1858). In 1876 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy. He died suddenly at La Rochelle on 27 August 1876.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Attribution:
External links
[
edit
]
Media related to
Eugene Fromentin
at Wikimedia Commons
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Artists
| |
---|
People
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|