FROMENTIN, EUGNE

born Oct. 24, 1820, La Rochelle, Fr. died Aug. 27, 1876, La Rochelle French painter and author, best known for his depictions of the land and people of Algeria. Influenced successively by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Eugne Delacroix, Fromentin abandoned his early stiffness in design and execution and developed into a brilliant colourist. Fauconnier arabe and Chasse au hron clearly show his debt to Delacroix. Fromentin's paintings show only one side of a talent 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 remarkable among the fiction of the century for imaginative observation. Fromentin's other literary works are Visites artistiques ou Simples Plerinages (185256; Artistic Visits or Simple Pilgrimages); Un t dans le Sahara (1857; A Summer in the Sahara); Une Anne dans le Sahel (1858; A Year in the Sahel); and Les Matres d'autrefois (1876; The Old Masters of Belgium and Holland, or The Masters of Past Time).