Eugène Fromentin

Eugene Fromentin is unusual in this company for being remembered almost as much for his writing as for his painting. A Frenchman of the mid-1800s, he made two long trips into Algeria, then newly under French control, and came back with the subject that filled his canvases, the North African desert, its horsemen, hunts and light.

His Orientalist paintings are quieter than the flashy harem scenes of some rivals, more interested in space, heat and distance. But he was also a gifted author. He wrote a tender, autobiographical novel of thwarted love called Dominique that is still read in France.

Near the end of his life he produced a book on the old masters of Holland and Belgium, The Masters of Past Time, studying Rubens, Rembrandt and their peers with a painter's practical eye. Fromentin died in 1876, shortly after finishing it.