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Frederick Arthur Bridgman Biography
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Frederick Arthur Bridgman was a well-known landscape and historical painter. He is most admired for his Orientalist subjects, including views of North Africa, in particular Egypt and Algeria, and his scenes from Ancient Egyptian history.
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Although born in Alabama, Bridgman came from a Yankee family. After the death of his doctor father and amid the mounting tension before the Civil War, the Bridgmans returned to their native New England, settling in New York. Young Frederick showed artistic gifts and was apprenticed as an engraver to the American Banknote Company. He attended evening classes at the Brooklyn Art Association at the same time. He also studied at the National Academy of Design, where he met Harry Humphrey Moore and Thomas Hovendon. In these early years, Bridgman exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association.
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Bridgman travelled to France, where he visited Pont Aven, the artists’ colony in Brittany frequented by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard as well as a circle of American painters around the Philadelphian Robert Wylie (1839-1877). Bridgman also studied in Paris with Jean Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Bridgman made an important reputation for himself in France at the annual Paris Salons; in Britain, where he exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1871 and 1904, and in Germany, where he showed at the Grosse Berliner Kunst Ausstellung. His work was included in the American displays at the 1889 Universal Exposition held in Paris.
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In 1872 Bridgman travelled to Spain and North Africa in the company of a British artist known only as ‘S’. In the winter of 1873-4 he made a second trip, visiting Egypt in the company of fellow American artist Charles Sprague Pearce. Bridgman married a young Bostonian, Florence Mott Baker; the deterioration of his wife’s health from the terrible inherited neurological disorder Huntington’s Chorea led him to return to Algiers in 1885 for a respite for them both in a warm climate. He wrote a fascinating travel narrative describing his journeys in North Africa, Winters in Algiers, published in 1888 and illustrated with woodcuts from his works.
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Bridgman’s great success culminated at the Paris Salons of 1877, 1878 and 1879 with a trio of paintings portraying life in the ancient Near East: The funeral of a mummy, which was purchased by James Gordon Bennett, owner ofThe New York Herald; The diversion of an Assyrian King, and The procession of the Sacred Bull. Exhibitions of the artist’s work were held at the American Art Gallery in New York in 1881 and 1890. In 1881 Bridgman was elected a member of the National Academy of the United States. In 1889 he was given the honour of hanging five works in the Paris International Exposition. In 1907, he was made an officer of the Légion d’Honneur.
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During the First World War, Bridgman suffered financial losses, in part due to gambling debts, and was forced to sell his lavish studio in the Boulevard Malherbes in Paris. Bridgman retired with his second wife, Marthe Yaeger, whom he had married three years after Florence’s death in 1901, to their house in Lyons-la-Forêt in Normandy where he remained until his death in 1928.
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The work of Frederick Arthur Bridgman is represented in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington DC and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Bridgman travelled to France, where he visited Pont Aven, the artists’ colony in Brittany frequented by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard as well as a circle of American painters around the Philadelphian Robert Wylie (1839-1877). Bridgman also studied in Paris with Jean Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Bridgman made an important reputation for himself in France at the annual Paris Salons; in Britain, where he exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1871 and 1904, and in Germany, where he showed at the Grosse Berliner Kunst Ausstellung. His work was included in the American displays at the 1889 Universal Exposition held in Paris.
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Studied at National Academy of Design
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Studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts Paris, France
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Studied with Gerome Paris, France
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Chairman of American Artists Jury Paris Universal Exposition
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| Selected Exhibitions |
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1881
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1st Solo Exhibition, New York, NY
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| Links to further information |
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