He was born inLa Rochelle. After leaving school he studied for some years underLouis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters ofAlgeria, 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 ofNorth African life. His first great success was produced at theSalon of 1847, by theGorges de la Chiffa. In 1849, he was awarded a medal of the second class.[3]
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.[3]
His books includeLes Maîtres d'autrefois ("The Masters of Past Time", 1876),[4] an influential appreciation ofEarly Netherlandish painting and the Northern Baroque of theOld Masters of Belgium and Holland,Dominique andA Summer in the Sahara. InLes Maîtres d'autrefois he deals with the complexity of paintings byRubens,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 ofThe 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 theDutch Golden Age painting develops shortly after Holland won its independence.Bernhard Berenson wrote of the book, "I carry Fromentin with me, and read him each evening about the pictures I have seen that he criticizes. He is the only writer on pictures worth his salt, but I do not always agree with him."[5]
Fromentin, who maintained that "art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible," was much influenced in style byEugène 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.[3]
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 theRevue des deux mondes in 1862, and dedicated toGeorge Sand, is remarkable among the fiction of the century for delicate and imaginative observation and for emotional earnestness.[3]
Fromentin's other literary works includeVisites artistiques (1852);Simples Pèlerinages (1856);Un été dans le Sahara (1857);Une année dans le Sahel (1858). In 1876 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy. He died suddenly at La Rochelle on 27 August 1876.[3]
"A Critic's Program" and "A Letter to a Young Artist" inRealism and Tradition in Art, 1848-1900: Sources and Documents, edited by Linda Nochlin, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966, pp. 19–25; reprinted from the Mary Caroline Robbins translation of Gonse (1888).
Between Sea and Sahara: An Algerian Journal, translation by Blake Robinson ofUne Anée dans le Sahel (1859), Ohio University Press, 1999; reissued in 2004 by Tauris Parke Paperbacks with the subtitleAn Orientalist Adventure.
"The Isle of Ré: An Unpublished Fragment" inEugène Fromentin, Painter and Writer by Louis Gonse, translated by Mary Caroline Robbins, Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1888, pp. 251–271; various other quotations, letters, and excerpts by Fromentin, translated by Robbins, appear throughout the book.
Bales, Richard.Persuasion in the French Personal Novel: Studies of Chateaubriand, Constant, Balzac, Nerval, and Fromentin, Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1997.
Beaume, Georges.Fromentin, translated from the French by Frederic Taber Cooper, New York: Stokes, 1913.
"Fromentin, Eugène", Benezit Dictionary of Artists, published online 31 October 2011.
Gill, Hélène. "Eugene Fromentin and the Experience of the Desert: Self-quest in the Other's Territory," Chapter 3 inThe Language of French Orientalist Painting, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.
Gillet, Louis."Eugène Fromentin" inThe Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909.
Hartman, Elwood.Three Nineteenth-Century French Writer/Artists and the Maghreb: The Literary and Artistic Depictions of North Africa by Théophile Gautier, Eugène Fromentin, and Pierre Loti, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1994.
Kaplan, Judith. "Eugéne Fromentin (1820-1876)" inOrientalist Writers, edited by Coeli Fitzpatrick and Dwayne A. Tunstall, Detroit : Gale Cengage Learning, 2012.
Magill, Frank N., editor. "Dominique by Eugéne Fromentin" inMasterplots: 2010 Plot Stories & Essay Reviews from the World's Fine Literature, Revised Edition, volume 3, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1976.
Mickel, Emanuel J.Eugène Fromentin, Twayne's World Authors Series 640, Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1981.