Frederick Arthur BRIDGMAN ✿

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (November 10, 1847 – January 13, 1928) was an American artist known for his paintings of "Orientalist" subjects. Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Bridgman was the son of a physician. He began as a draughtsman in New York City, for the American Bank Note Company in 1864–65, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design.

He went to Paris in 1866, and in 1867 he entered the studio of the noted academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), where he was deeply influenced by Gérôme's precise draftsmanship, smooth finishes, and concern for Middle-Eastern themes. Thereafter, Paris became his headquarters. In 1874, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1881.

Between 1872 and 1874 Bridgman thus made his first trip to North Africa, traveling between Algeria and Egypt and making around 300 sketches which became the raw material for many of his subsequent oil paintings. Other visits to North Africa until the 1980s allowed him to assemble a collection of clothes, architectural elements and artistic objects that appear in his works (John Singer Sargent recounted, with great amusement, that Bridgman's overcrowded studio was, together with the Eiffel Tower , one of the most visited attractions in Paris).

The "Oriental" production was very successful: the artist exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877, 1878 and 1879, and the largest composition in this series, Funeral of a Mummy on the Nile, was purchased by the owner of The New York Herald , James Gordon Bennett, was the beginning of his fortune at home.