FROMENTIN, EUGENE French painter,was born at La Rochelle on Oct. 24, 1820. He studied under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters of Algeria, having been able repeatedly to visit the land and people that suggested the subjects of most of his works. Among his more important early works are—"Moisson en Algerie"; "Diffa, reception du Soir"; "Chasse a la gazelle" and "Enterrement maure." They are somewhat stiff in design and execution. The second period extends till 1859 and includes the following works—"Les Bateleurs negres"; "Le Simoun"; and "La Lisiere d'oasis." They are grey in tone and were executed under Corot's influence. After 1860 Fromentin's colour becomes bright and luminous :—"Fauconnier arabe"; "Chasse au heron"; "La curee" ; "Centaures et centauresses" ; here Fromentin was influ enced by Eugene Delacroix. In these pictures is given with great truth and refinement the unconscious grandeur of barbarian and animal attitudes and gestures. Fromentin's paintings show only one side of a genius that was perhaps even more felicitously expressed in literature; "Dominique," first published in the Revue des deux mondes in 1862, and dedicated to George Sand, is re markable among the fiction of the century for delicate and imagi native observation and for emotional earnestness. Fromentin's other literary works are—Visites artistiques (185a); Simples Pelerinages (1856) ; Un Ete dans le Sahara (1857) ; Une Annee dans le Sahel (18 58) ; and Les Maitres d'autre f ois (1876). In 1876 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy. He died suddenly at La Rochelle on Aug. 27, 18 76.
See L. Gonse, Eug. Fromentin (1881)