Interpreting the Orient through the arts would destroy it, the artisti — Eugène Fromentin

"The things I havent seen with my own eyes are for me unknown."

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

"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 ones self as truth, but which it is well to leave in their darkness as mysteries."

"The Algerians of Fromentin are much more real Arabs than those of his artist colleagues."

"..Africa: its 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."

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