Frederick Arthur Bridgman
Frederick Arthur Bridgman
Frederick Arthur Bridgman (November 10, 1847 - 1928) was an American artist, born in Tuskegee, Alabama.
An American Southerner, born in Tuskeegee, Alabama, the son of a physician, Bridgman would become one
of the United States' most well-known and well-regarded painters and become known as one of the world's
most talented "Orientalist" painters. He began as a draughtsman in New York City, for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerome. Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large and important composition, The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile, in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor. Other paintings by him were An American Circus in Normandy, Procession of the Bull Apis (now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and a Rumanian Lady (in the Temple collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
In 1867, Bridgman entered the studio of the noted academic painter Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904), where he was deeply influenced by Gerome's precise draftsmanship, smooth finishes, and concern for Middle-Eastern themes. (Bridgman would even become known as "the American Gerome.") No mere imitator, however, Bridgman would later adopt a more naturalistic aesthetic, emphasizing bright colors and painterly brushwork.
One of Bridgman's most recognized Orientalist images, "A Street Scene in Algeria", is exceptional for its biographical and historical significance. Many of its details can be considered "signature" motifs of the artist, and its subject, a pointed record of travel. In keeping with Bridgman's tendency in the 1880s to focus on intimate domestic subjects, two seated male figures are given pride of place in the center of the composition, gesticulating while they chat.
