Frederick Arthur Bridgeman Paintings

Famous Frederick Arthur Bridgeman Paintings for Sale

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Frederick Arthur Bridgman oil painting artist

Biography of Frederick Arthur Bridgeman

American Orientalist painter
born 1847 - died 1928

Student of: Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) from 1866 to 1870
Teacher of: Jay Hall Connaway (1893-1970)
Officer of: Légion d'Honneur (from 1907)

Frederick Arthur Bridgeman was born in Alabama, the son of an itinerant doctor from Massachusetts. his father died when Frederick was only three years old and, sensing the north-south tensions prior to the Civil War, his mother decided to return with her two sons to Boston in the north. However they soon moved to New York where Frederick, already showing artistic talent, joined the American Banknote Company as an apprentice engraver. But in spite of his progress and the opportunities for rapid promotion, Frederick Arthur Bridgeman preferred to dedicate his time to painting, taking evening drawing classes first at the Brooklyn Art Association, then at the National Academy of Design. It is recounted that he even rose at 4 o'clock every morning to paint before going to work.

Bridgman's studies soon produced results and in 1865 and again in 1866 Frederick Arthur Bridgeman paintings was exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association. Encouraged by his success he gave up his job and in 1866, with the sponsorship of a group of Brooklyn businessmen, set out for Paris. However he soon found himself in Pont-Avent, the small village in Brittany which was home to an American artist colony under the charismatic leadership of Robert Wylie (1839-1877) who painted dramatic rural landscapes. Frederick Arthur Bridgeman stayed there for two summers, thinking also of becoming a landscape painter like Wylie.

Bridgman was soon exhibiting at the Paris Salons and his A Provincial Circus had much success at the Salon of 1870, so much so that Frederick Arthur Bridgeman then sent it to America for exhibition at the Brooklyn Art Association. At this time he also had one of his canvases engraved for reproduction in the journal Le Monde Illustré and began to sell some of Frederick Arthur Bridgeman oil painting to the dealer Goupil, Gérome's father-in-law.

In Paris Frederick Arthur Bridgeman rented an atelier in the same building as Pearce and another American, E H Blashfield. There he commenced painting several ambitious reconstructions of antique Egyptian life, seeming to have forgotten his original ambition of being a landscape artist of the Bretan or Algerian countryside! The first, The Mummy's Funeral, was exhibited at the Salon of 1877 and was remarkably successful, becoming an exhibition favourite. It was engraved, copied and finally bought by the proprietor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett. his reputation then made, Frederick Arthur Bridgeman married a young heiress from Boston, Florence Mott Baker.

The peak of his career probably came with the mounting of a personal exhibition displaying over three hundred of Frederick Arthur Bridgeman paintings at the American Art Gallery, the major innovation of this exhibition being the inclusion of a large number of his sketches besides the usual new paintings and prints of older paintings.

Frederick Arthur Bridgeman painting was highly praised not only for the variety of subjects but also the fine quality of their execution, their frankness, fidelity, freshness and beauty. Following this success, Bridgman was elected a member of the National Academy of Design.

In 1888 Bridgman published a long fully illustrated account of his stay in Algiers in Harper's Monthly Magazine. It was taken from his larger, more complete publication of the same year entitled Winters in Algiers which also described his previous stays in the city and which was sumptuously illustrated with wood engravings of Frederick Arthur Bridgeman drawings and paintings.

The next decade was a period of uninterrupted success. Frederick Arthur Bridgman was honoured with having five paintings displayed at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The following year a personal exhibition, similar to that of 1881, of about 400 of his pictures took place at Fifth Avenue Galleries in New York. When it moved on to Chicago it contained less than a hundred of these paintings - evidence of significant sales, enabling him to significantly expand his Parisian home on the Boulevard Malesherbes. Its extravagant decor in classical and oriental style led the artist John Singer Sargent to say that it was one of the two sights worth visiting Paris to see; the other being the Eiffel tower! - Supply American oil paintings by famous artists.

In 1907 Frederick Arthur Bridgeman bacame an Officer of the French Legion of Honour. However after the First World War, his popularity declined and Frederick Arthur Bridgman moved out of Paris to Lyons-la-Forêt in Normandy where, although continuing to paint, Frederick Arthur Bridgeman died in 1928 almost forgotten by his former admiring public.
Along with his fellow-countryman Edwin Lord Weeks, Frederick Arthur Bridgeman is considered to be one of the doyens of the American Orientalist school.