Eugène Fromentin Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

After leaving school Eugène Fromentin studied for a few years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest artists to paint scenes of Algeria, having traveled there when he was young to visit the land and the people. Painting the picturesque North African life was to be his forte for the rest of his career.

In 1852, at age thirty-two, he paid a second visit to Algeria, accompanying an archaeological mission, making detailed studies and sketches of the scenery and the habits of its people, this realistic accuracy, and intimate knowledge was put on the canvas in his oil paintings.

Besides being a talented painter, Eugène Fromentin was also a writer and author, his books include Les Maîtres d' Autrefois (The Masters of Past Time) and Dominique and A Summer in the Sahara. In Les Maîtres d'Autrefois he analyzes the complexity of the paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt and others, their style and the artist's emotions at the time of creating their masterpieces.

Eugène Fromentin 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, this offered him a special insight, unlike the majority of art critics past and present. He also puts the work in a social, political, and economic context, as the Dutch Golden Age painting developed and grows not long after Holland won its freedom.

Eugène Fromentin was much influenced by the style by Eugène Delacroix. His works are distinguished by striking composition, great dexterity of handling, and brilliancy of color, but his later works show signs of an exhausted spirit, caused by physical weakness.

Art Movement: Orientalism.
Artists Influencing Eugène Fromentin: Louis Cabat, Eugène Delacroix.
He Traveled To Algeria.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.