Barbara Eugene Wright: Itinerary of Fromentin's painting.

On 2 February 2013, the Musee des Beaux Arts in La Rochelle acquired a painting by Eugene Fromentin, Arabe a cheval portant en troupe un fou, which had already made its way to the United States by the beginning of the 20th century and which was owned by one family there, from 1903 to 2013. This work, which probably dates from the 1860s, is important in Fromentin's development as an Orientalist painter, but also marks the close links between word and image in the creative imagination of this artist, who was both a painter and a writer. Two scenes from his travel account, Un ete dans le Sahara, provide the subject-matter of the painting and refer to the respect shown, in the Arab world, to those suffering from mental illness, a topic to which Fromentin had already been sensitized by virtue of the fact that his father had created, near to La Rochelle, one of the first purpose-built psychiatric hospitals in France. The preliminary drawings throw light on the genesis of the painting, in parallel with the development of the verbal account. This happy discovery shows how, despite all the formal differences separating the techniques of painting and writing, a theme can be traced, in its simultaneous development, in time, and in the two media, in the work of Fromentin.