Eugène Fromentin

Eugène Fromentin (* October 24, 1820 in La Rochelle, † August 27 1876 in St. Maurice at La Rochelle ) was a French writer, art critic and painter. His reputation as a writer he gained with the psychological novel, Dominique ( 1862).

Life

After school, he studied on his father, a doctor desire 1839 law in Paris and dedicated himself, then in addition to the writing of the painting. One of his teachers was the landscape painter Louis Cabat. It was based on the contemporary French painting, and Dutch landscape paintings. Influence he was by Eugène Delacroix and Jean -Baptiste Camille Corot.

Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters of Algeria. Notably influenced by the Orientalist painters Marilhat, he decided to enter a new area of ​​Orient painting with the description of the North African desert. In 1846 he traveled for the first time for six weeks in Algeria. Further journeys to Algeria carried out from 1848 to 1849 and from 1852 to 1853 The fruit of this study trips were not only numerous paintings, but also two excellent travel descriptions in letters. "Un été dans le Sahara " (1857, 8th edition, 1884 ) and "Une année dans le Sahel " (1859, 5th edition 1884). An illustrated edition of both appeared in 1878. Dominique The novel first appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, (May 1862), then at Hachette (1863 ).

In addition to Algeria were his main places of activity in North Africa, Paris and La Rochelle. His students included Fernand Cormon and Henri Gervex and he was a close friend of Gustave Moreau. In 1869, Fromentin visited Egypt, Venice 1870 and 1875 Belgium and Holland, where he studied the Dutch masters and the result of these studies in a written analysis: " Les maitres d' autre fois " (. , The old masters, Paris 1876) resigned. The book was published in his last year and includes a critical view of the painting.

As a painter

As a painter, he strove especially after that reproduce the phenomena of light and air, which show up in the desert air with the greatest delicacy of the brushwork, but at the same time to give the Masked a characteristic meaning. His specialty was the gradation of tones in gray and violet. His principal pictures are: Moorish Funeral (1853 ), gazelle hunting, audience with a caliph, black entertainers with the nomads, street Bab el Gharbi in El Aghuât (1859 ), Arab couriers, arabic bivouac at daybreak, the Arab falconer and falconry in Algiers (1863, in Luxembourg), the heron hunting (1865 ), the Fantasia in Algiers ( 1869).

With its images Algeria he became successful because they corresponded to the artistic tastes of the time. Today, they are rather less attention. His works can be seen, among others, the Musée d' Orsay in Paris.

Works (selection)

Pictures

• Gazelle Hunt, 1856, canvas, 98 × 195 cm.Nantes, Musée des Beaux -Arts
• Falconry in Algeria, 1863
• Maintenance of an Arab horseman troops in a forest, 1868
• Falconry, 1868, canvas, 45 × 85 cm.Paris, Musee National du Louvre
• Falconry in Algeria, canvas, 166 × 117 cm
• Land of Thirst, 1869
• Rest of Arab horsemen in the plane, 1870, canvas, 74 × 95 cm.Paris, Musee National du Louvre
• Arabs, 1871
• Egyptian Women on the edge of the Nile ( Un Souvenir d' Esna ), 1876, canvas, 120 × 105 cm.Paris, Musee National du Louvre
• The Nile, wood, 33 × 41 cm.Paris, Musée National du Louvre.
• Dying of thirst in the desert, canvas, 103 × 143 cm; Overall dimensions: 168 × 300 cm.Paris, Musée National du Louvre.

• Dominique - ISBN 3-7350-0084-3
• The Old Masters - ISBN 3-7701-4393-0