biografia di Frederic Arthur BRIDGMAN (1847-1928)

Birth place: Tuskegee, AL

Death place: near Rouen, France

Addresses: France, 1866-on

Profession: Painter, writer

Studied: Brooklyn Art Studio and NAD, c.1863; Atelier Suisse, Paris, 1866; Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Gérôme, Paris, 1867-98; Académie Julian, Paris, with Lefebvre, 1886-89

Exhibited: Brooklyn AA, 1865-86; Paris Salon, 1868-98 (except 1871, 1881, 1884, 1891), (med, 1877, for The Funeral of a Mummy"); NAD, 1871-1926; Boston AC, 1875, 1878, 1886, 1889; PAFA, 1882-1883, 1885, 1888-89, 1892-93, 1896-98, 1900-09; Fine Arts Soc., London, 1887 (first London solo); RA, London, 1877 -1904; AIC; Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, 1878 (24 paintings); Paris Expo., 1878 (med.), 1889 (med.); 1900 (med.); Cercle Artistique et Litteraire, Paris, 1889 (first Paris solo); Am. Art Gal., NYC, 1881 (first solo); PAFA, 1882-1909; Munich, 1891 (gold); Berlin, 1892 (med.); Antwerp, 1894 (med.); Pan-Am. Expo., Buffalo, 1901 (med.); St. Louis Expo., 1904 (med.); Corcoran Gal., 1907; Mulhouse Mus., France, 1926. Awards: Legion of Honor, 1878; Order of St Michael of Bavaria. "

Member: ANA, 1847; NA, 1881; Lotos Cl.; Arch. Lg., 1899; Paris SAP; Am. Ar. in Paris Committee for the Universal Expo, 1889 (pres.).

Work: CGA; Brooklyn Mus; AIC; Acad. A., Leningrad; Liverpool Gal.

Comments: An expatriate, he arrived in France in 1866 and became one of the leading (and earliest) members of the Pont-Avon artists colony in Brittany before beginning his studies with GÈrôme. In 1872, he made the first of many trips to Spain and North Africa. He specialized in orientalist and archaeological subjects, and his detailed, brilliantly colored, exotic scenes (of Algeria and Egypt especially) brought him tremendous fame and patronage in the 1870s and 1880s. He was the author of Winters in Algeria Harpers (1890) and L'Anarchie dans l'Art ("Anarchy in Art", in French, stating his position on Impressionism, 1898). He was also a poet ("L"Idole et l'Ideal" 1901), violinist, and a composer of symphonies and orchestral works. He moved from Paris to Lyons-la-Foret, near Rouen, c.1914.

Sources: WW25; Baigell, Dictionary; Naylor, NAD; Falk, NAD; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 165-68; 324-25; exh. cat., The Drawings of Frederick A. Bridgman, Jill Newhouse, NYC (1983)

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