sought,” recorded Louis Gonse, “to paint in lighter, fresher colours: his instinct counselled him to avoid black as a mortal enemy—that black which certain painters deliberately affect, thinking that in this way they are imitating the old masters. All those soft grays, which are luminous half-tones of white, appeared imperceptibly beneath his brush. After having won distinction as a colourist, he became and remained to the end a master of tonal harmony in the subtlest sense. According to the opinion of Sainte-Beuve, ‘he attained his greatest effects by combining the simplest methods in a marvellous manner.’ And since his ambition was of steady growth, his progress in his craft was uninterrupted.”

Among Fromentin’s productions of this period are: The Shepherds on the High Plateaus of Kabylia, an austere spectacle witnessed on the road from Medéah to Boghar; The Bed of the Oued Mzi; and the charming canvas of Turkish Houses in Mustapha-in-Algiers. In 1863, he produced The Arab Bivouac at Daybreak, which, by its presentment of salient details and its sympathetic understanding of the slightest gesture, sets before us the impressive melancholy of the nomad life; he produced further The Arab Falconer, one of the most brilliant of his smaller works; and lastly, Hunting with the Falcon in Algeria, which many of his admirers regard as his masterpiece, and which, at all events, is his most famous painting. It may now be seen in the collection in the Louvre.

Fromentin repeatedly duplicated, in crayon, in aquarelle, and in oil, this scene which represents two Arab chiefs hunting, accompanied by their attendants. The horseman in the middle of the picture, an old man holding a falcon, resembles, on his motionless horse, an equestrian statue. The second horseman, the one in the foreground, is undoubtedly his son; he is as attractive as a pretty girl and young like the horse he rides, a white horse, of a beautiful, silvery white, the lower part of the legs shading off into an exquisite rose tint. The rider is clad in blue, white, and gray, while a saddle of turquoise blue, enriched with trimmings of glazed vermillion, adorns the courser, which is distinguished by a luxuriant mane, an ample, flowing tail tinged with ochre and amber, and a black eye, profound and full of life. Two Arabs, kneeling in the pathway, have taken possession of a hare which the falcons have just killed. The whole effect is that of extreme distinction, marred perhaps by too much embellishment.

In 1870, Fromentin found his way to Venice. At the first rumours of war, however, he returned precipitately to France, to join his wife and daughter in Paris and take them to Saint-Maurice, his beloved village adjacent to La Rochelle. From Venice, he brought back The Grand Canal and The Breakwater, two canvases somewhat leaden in tone, which some critics class in the number of Fromentin’s blunders. The reason may be that they failed to recognize in them the Venice of their dreams, the Venice of tradition, flamboyant and enchanted. But there is another, a tranquillized Venice, which at times allows her fireworks to burn out. Fromentin was not a romantic painter; it was in their hours of repose that he beheld the Grand Canal, the Breakwater, the houses leaning over the water’s brink; and he expressed what he really saw in the midst of a silence that contains a special poetry as well as truth. Fromentin exhibited for the last time in the Salon of 1876—two canvases brought back from Egypt, The Nile and A Souvenir of Esneh, canvases distinguished for their “cold, dull colouring, ranging through a neutral scale of violet lights.”

The masterpiece of Fromentin, the picture in which his qualities of composition, drawing, and colour are most clearly revealed, is, in the opinion of all artists—who are alone capable of simultaneously appreciating the art and the craftsmanship of a painting—Crossing the Ford. This picture is now in the possession of Mme. Isaac Péreire. Across a canvas measuring little more than two yards, a group of horsemen are journeying through a waste of sand, stretching away in long, pallid dunes, broken here and there by clumps of sombre growth; a swarm of women surrounds them, as light of foot as bees upon the wing. A stream, bordered on the right by tamarinds with sharp, narrow leafage, displays its slender, mirror-like surface. Some of the horses are reserved for the chiefs, while others are laden with burdens of clothing and provisions. The sky, partly clear and partly overcast, occupies the greater portion of the canvas: in the far distance, the swelling curve of the horizon conveys a strong impression of infinity and solitude. The central figures are drawn upon a scale hardly exceeding eight inches in height. The horses, fired with that generous pride which this painter always attributes to them, seem to know their way even better than their riders. They proceed without haste, enjoying the gentle breeze stirring fitfully across the vast expanse, and the time of day, which is growing late. The colour scheme of the picture is bold and conveys an exquisite savour of gold and gray, flickering flames vanishing behind the leafage, as well as along the horizon, as the dusk shuts down. In this picture, Fromentin has produced, with the simplest and most adaptable resources of his palette, a work in which, underneath all the surface charm, the melancholy which abides in the heart of man, and above all in the heart of the Arab, blends harmoniously with the beauty of the world.

IV.—THE MASTER: HIS PERSONALITY AND HIS DESTINY

One of the masters of to-day, of a generous and impulsive nature, who does not wish to be quoted by name, but whose works may be admired in the Luxembourg, consented to give me some information regarding Fromentin, whose pupil he once was. I should like, as a conclusion to this study, to be able to transcribe literally what he told; but at least I shall draw a pious inspiration from his words.

Fromentin laid on his colours very thickly. His solid grounds were always most carefully prepared and his composition calculated in advance down to the smallest detail. At the start, he came under the influence of Decamps, Marilhat, and more especially Delacroix, and in consequence neglected line work, devoting himself solely to the distribution of colours. Delacroix and the romantic school of his time did not interpret Algeria well, because they failed to see it well. They saw it through the black holes of windows, in all the violence of its whites and reds, in the picturesqueness of its costumes and the long stretches of its dusty streets. But Fromentin had visited Italy, and during his excursions across this museum of diverse aspects he made a special study of the effects of sunshine upon the handiwork of man. It was while still saturated with the brilliance and with the art treasures of Italy that he first saw the land of Africa, or rather that he first conceived the desire to learn to know its secrets. Fromentin never put upon his canvases the Africa of the desert, in which there is nothing but the white of the burnoose and the gray of the dune, but Algeria the Fair, Algeria already civilized. He was enraptured by the sight of it and by the penetrating conception, full of eager curiosity, which he had already formed of it. For Fromentin does not command by the audacity of his colours; he commands by the charm of his apportionment of light and shadow, and by the precision of a style which seeks, irrespective of form, to show us the soul of people and of things. He sees with the eyes of a poet, he expresses himself in the manner of a philosopher, he forces us to reflect. He detests all that is vulgar, superfluous, and extravagant. All that pertains to reality has for him a significance, of which he seeks the cause, and for which he frequently discovers a definitive expression.