Eugène Fromentin

Hector Brame, Paris (by 1879)
Private Collection, California (and sold: Christie's, New York, May 24, 1989, lot 32, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner 

 

Eugène Fromentin, Sahara et Sahel, vol. II, 'Une Année dans le Sahel', Paris, 1887, p. 350 (illustrated as an engraving by Paul le Rat)

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. This painting is in very good condition. The canvas is lined and the paint layer is very well textured, despite the lining. The surface has been cleaned and varnished. There are some retouches visible under ultraviolet light beneath the central dark horse and to the immediate left to the group of figures in the sky. Overall the condition is beautiful and the picture should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

As early as 1857, Eugène Fromentin began to paint dramatic scenes of Arab horsemen caught in the midst of the simoun (the hot, dry, sand-laden windstorms of the North African and Arabian deserts). Preliminary drawings for some of these subjects exist in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, and in the collection of the Fromentin family. This work may be one of several smaller versions of Fromentin's extraordinary painting of 1864, the Coup de vent dans les plaines d'alfa (Windstorm on the Esparto Plains of the Sahara) (fig. 1). In Le Simoun, however, Fromentin has exchanged an emphasis on the wind-whipped esparto grass for a more studied depiction of the Arab horses and horsemen themselves. 

Silhouetted against an ominous sky, their burnouses billowing out of control, the men brace themselves against the simoun with well-practiced determination. The wild eyes of the two bay horses indicate their fear, as they seek solace in whatever source they can.  The gray Arab, with his powerful hindquarters and muscular, arched neck, appears more assured; his head is bowed in order to protect his eyes from the unforgiving winds, and his hooves are firmly planted.  The earthward stare of both horse and rider seems also to ground them, and imparts on the pyramidal group a sense of reassuring stoicism.  They will successfully brave this storm - and probably many more.

Such evocative scenes were the result of first-hand experiences processed, as Fromentin wrote, 'through memory,' and the visual expressions of a very particular aesthetic and personal philosophy.  Fromentin was one of the first major artists to spend extended periods of time in Algeria after the defeat of the Emir Abd al-Qadir at the hands of the French in the 1840s. (Abd al-Qadir was an Algerian leader and Arab folk hero, remembered for his absolute resistance of foreign domination and his championing of the Islamic faith.)  After a transformative trip to the region in 1846, Fromentin made his debut as an Orientalist painter with two landscapes in the 1847 Paris Salon.  Three years later, and after a winter spent at the oasis of Biskra in 1847-8, Fromentin exhibited eleven Orientalist subjects, securing his reputation as one of the leading figures of the genre.  In 1852-3 Fromentin was again in Algeria, this time with his new wife. 

These cumulative experiences inspired not only numerous Orientalist pictures, which Fromentin would continue to execute throughout his career, but two illustrated travel books as well, Un été dans le Sahara (1857) and Une année dans le Sahel (1859).  (Almost uniquely among Orientalist painters, Fromentin was recognized equally in his lifetime as a writer and a painter.  In addition to his travel books, Fromentin published a novel, Dominique [1862], and a study of Dutch and Flemish art, still much admired today. The present work was engraved by Paul le Rat for the 1887 edition of Une année dans le Sahel, fig. 2). In addition to his art, these texts have caused Fromentin to become the subject of numerous recent critical studies, which document his role as one of the earliest and most significant theorists of Orientalism (see, for example, Roger Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880-1930, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 2003).

Rather than adopting the intrusive, ethnographic approach of his colleagues - which resulted, Fromentin disparagingly commented, in pictures 'composed like inventories' - Fromentin sought the classical, idealized beauty beneath unfamiliar façades (Sahel, Oeuvres completes, ed. Guy Sagnes, Paris, 1984, 322).  In the extraordinary union between Arab horse and horseman, for example, Fromentin saw a Greek centaur, the supreme example of the fusion of man and beast (Une Année dans le Sahel, Paris, 1963 ed., p. 247).  Fromentin's near-obsession with this subject during the late 1850s and 1860s, and his perfection of the genre, was, in some ways, his downfall as an artist: because these pictures outsold all else, Fromentin reluctantly gave up other subjects that interested him. 

The cool tones of this particular picture are indicative of Fromentin's other, major revelation - that the intense light of North Africa reduced all colors to gray. 'Gray, here the advent and triumph of gray,' Fromentin would write, 'Everything is gray . . . ' (Lettres de jeunesse, ed. Pierre Blanchon, Paris, 1909, p. 240).  The tempered palette, rolling storm clouds, and slate-gray sky witnessed in many of Fromentin's mature compositions reflect his attempt to explore the subtleties of this monochromatic landscape, as well as his lifelong appreciation of Dutch painting and the later works of Camille Corot. So too, it is this suppression of harsh tones and this 'cool view' of subject matter that differentiates Fromentin's equestrian works from those frenzied, raucously colored compositions of his compatriots, Delacroix and Chassériau. Though less immediately arresting, Fromentin's works have their own unique power. The noted critic Théophile Gautier, in discussing one of Fromentin's contributions to the 1859 Salon, made this point most eloquently: 'One would think that the wind could not be painted, being a colourless and formless thing, yet it blows visibly through M. Fromentin's picture' ('Salon de 1859,' Le Moniteur, May 28,1859).