Eugène-Samuel-Auguste Fromentin, French painter, writer. and art historian. From 1843 he studied under landscape artist Louis Cabet and Oriental artist Prosper Marilhat. He produced primarily atmospheric Oriental landscapes, which were the fruits of three trips to North Africa between 1846 and 1853. Though professionally a painter, he is famous for his one novel, Dominique, which has strongly autobiographical elements. Fromentin is also remembered for his illuminating essays on Dutch and Flemish painting, published in 1876 as Les Maîtres d'autrefois, at the time highly influential pieces of artistic literature that had considerable influence on later generations of artists. //