ABSTRACT
Eugene Fromentin was one of many nineteenth-century painters to travel to Algeria but his artistic and literary legacy remains especially significant as it gave a particular and enduring shape to colonial Algeria. Fromentin first visited Algeria in 1846 and though the French conquest of the Ottoman Regency of Algiers had begun in 1830, the region was offering resistance in 1848. Fromentin was to paint images of the Orient throughout the rest of his career, but at an early stage felt that his pictorial representations were inadequate to what he saw and so drew upon the resources of writing in order to convey what exceeded his capacity to depict visually. Fromentin describes what he sees in terms of 'tableaux', paintings or scenes, and situates his experiences—memories, at the time of writing—within a context that is European, by way of contrast, and within a frame that derives its shape from European aesthetics.
