Frederick Arthur BRIDGMAN ~ Orientalist ✿

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928) was an American orientalist painter. His career began working as a draftsman in New York City for the American Bank Note Company.

In the same years 1864-1865 Frederick Arthur Bridgman studied art at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design, then left for Paris in 1866, where he settled and became a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts the following year. In Gérôme's studio, Bridgman mastered the technique of drawing and smooth finishing, and discovered Middle Eastern exoticism. The influence of his French master was such as to earn him the nickname of "American Gérôme", and yet he was not a mere imitator, and he adopted, as he went on, a more naturalistic aesthetic, accentuating the brightness of the colour. He made a trip to Spain in 1872.

The "Oriental" production was very successful: the artist exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1878 and 1879, and the largest composition of this series, Funeral of a Mummy on the Nile, bought by the owner of The New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, was the beginning of his fortune at home.