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Eugène Fromentin Quotes

1820–1876 France

Eugène Fromentin (24 October, 1820 – 27 August, 1876) was a French painter and writer, now better remembered for his writings on art and artists - and from his Oriental voyages, pictured in words and in images.

France
Non-fiction authors
Painters

Random Eugène Fromentin quote

7 quotes

..the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well [characterised by] the total absence of what today we call 'a subject'.

..that zone of consciousness through which all artists travel mentally, before ever approaching the easel.

The things I haven't seen with my own eyes are for me unknown.

Interpreting the Orient through the arts would destroy it, the artistic exploitation might eventually prove as harmful as military or political adventurism.

..Africa: it's a magic word that lends itselfs to suppositions and sets amateur explorers to dreaming. I want to try to be 'at home' on this bit of foreign [Arab] soil.

The art of painting is only the art of expressing the invisible by the visible. Whether its roads be great or small, they are sown with problems which it is permitted to sound for one's self as truth, but which it is well to leave in their darkness as mysteries.

What motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture? None. And notice that he never asked for one. A peasant with a drunken red nose looks at you with his heavy eye and laughs with open mouth showing his teeth, raising a jug; if it is well painted, it has its value.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Eugène Fromentin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.