[프랑스] Eugène Fromentin

Born	(1820-10-24)24 October 1820 La Rochelle
Died	27 August 1876(1876-08-27) (aged 55) La Rochelle
Nationality	French
Education	Louis Cabat
Known for	Painter, Author
Movement	Orientalist

(October 24, 1820 – August 27, 1876) was a French painter and writer,^[1] now better remembered

for his writings.

알제리의 풍경과 주민들을 묘사한 그림들로 유명하다. 장 바티스트 카미유 코로와 외젠 들라크루아에게서 영향을 받았으며 구도·기교면에서 보이던 초기의 경직성을 버리고 화려한 색채화가로 변모해 갔다. 〈아랍인 포코니에 Fauconnier arabe〉·〈왜가리 사냥 Chasse au héron〉은 그가 들라크루아의 영향을 받았음을 뚜렷하게 보여주고 있다.

프로망탱의 그림들은 그가 지닌 재능의 일부분만을 보여주는 것이며 그의 재능은 아마 문학에서 훨씬 더 적절하게 나타난 것으로 생각되는데, 1862년 잡지 〈두 세계의 만남 Revue des Deux Mondes〉에 처음으로 발표하여 조르주 상드에게 헌정한 〈도미니크 Dominique〉는 19세기의 소설들 중에서도 특히 상상력이 풍부한 관찰로 주목할 만하다.

그밖의 문학작품으로는 〈미술 견학 또는 간소한 순례 여행 Visites artistiques ou simples pélerinages〉(1852~56)·〈사하라 사막에서의 여름 Un Été dans le Sahara〉(1857)·〈사엘에서의 1년 Une Année dans le Sahel〉(1858)·〈옛 거장들 Les Maîtres d'autrefois〉(1876) 등이 있다.[다음백과]

He was born in La Rochelle. After leaving school he studied for some years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters of Algeria, 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 of North African life. In 1849, he was awarded a medal of the second class.^[2]

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.^[2]

His books include Les Maîtres d'autrefois ("The Masters of Past Time", 1876), an influential appreciation of Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Baroque of the Old Masters of Belgium and Holland, Dominique and A Summer in the Sahara. In Les Maîtres d'autrefois he deals with the complexity of paintings by Rubens, 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 of The 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 the Dutch Golden Age painting develops shortly after Holland won its independence. The book developed from articles for journals. Meyer Schapiro has written an essay on Fromentin, "Eugene Fromentin as Critic".^[3]

His first great success was produced at the Salon of 1847, by the Gorges de la Chiffa. Among his more important works are:

• La Place de la Brèche^[4] à Constantine (1849)
• Enterrement Maure (1853)
• Bateleurs nègres (1859)
• Audience chez un chalife (1859)
• Berger kabyle (1859)
• Courriers arabes (1861)
• Bivouac arabe (1863)
• Chasse au faucon (1863)
• Fauconnier arabe (now at Luxembourg) (1863)
• Chasse au héron (1865)
• Voleurs de nuit (1867)
• Centaures et arabes attaqués par une lionne (1868)
• Halte de muletiers (1869)
• Le Nil (1875)
• Un souvenir d'Esneh (1875)

• Selection of works
• 

  Arabs, 1871

• 

  Moroccan Horsemen at the Foot of the Chiffra Cliffs

• 

  Un Souvenir d'Esneh, 1876

Fromentin, who maintained that "art is the ｅxpression of the invisible by means of the visible", was much influenced in style by Eugène 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.^[2]

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 the Revue des deux mondes in 1862, and dedicated to George Sand, is remarkable among the fiction of the century for delicate and imaginative observation and for emotional earnestness.^[2]

Fromentin's other literary works are Visites 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 August 27, 1876.^[2]