Frederic A. Bridgeman Art

Oil Study of Two Horses Oil on canvas, c. 1880 Unsigned Estate stamp verso of canvas and on stretcher (see photo) Condition: Excellent New gilt frame aptterned after the period frame Painting size: 4 1/8 x 8 3/8 inches Frame size: 6 3/4 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of the Artist Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York Eric G. Carlson Fine Prints, New York "Frederick (sic) Arthur Bridgman relocated from Alabama to New York with his family while still a youth. He was eventually employed as an engraver with the American Bank Note Company. He began studying art in his spare time inthe Art Schools of Brooklyn and the National Academy of Design in New York. He traveled to Paris in 1866 and became a favorite student of Gérôme which lead to Bridgman's exhibition in the Paris Salon in 1868. He made France his permanent home in 1870, and spent his summers on sketching tours of Brittany. He exhibited with the National Academy of Design in 1871. He lived in Egypt in 1873; scenes from Egyptian antiquity were prominent in his work. Bridgman's talents extended to writing and music; he was a noted composer and musician. The artist died in Rouen, France, in 1928." Courtesy SAAM (Smithsonian American Art Museum) "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. 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. 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. 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. 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...