Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Cornish Collection, UK (by 1928)

Hampstead Public Library (presented by the above, in 1928)

William Howard Doane, Ohio, thence by descent from the above

Sale: Christie's, New York, 28 February 1991, lot 65

With Richard Green, London

Purchased from the above by the present owner

Chicago, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893, no. 203

C. M. Kurtz, ed., Official Illustrations from the Art Gallery of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Philadelphia, 1893, p. 143, illustrated

Gerald M. Ackerman, American Orientalists, Courbevoie/Paris, 1994, p. 28, illustrated

In an Algiers courtyard shaded by orange trees, two women, watched by their lady in waiting, weave an ornamental piece of fabric on a mother-of-pearl-inlaid loom. One of them has put her lute to one side, presumably following a musical interlude. Another girl, standing, arranges a posy of flowers, while a young child sails his toy boat in a water-filled marble basin. Bridgman evokes a halcyon scene for all the senses, from the sumptuous colours of the rich array of fabrics and costumes, the flowering oleander and blue-tiled walls, the fragrant ripe oranges, to the suggested dulcet tones of the stringed instrument. The musical theme in the painting is partly self-referential. Bridgman inherited his mother's musical talent, and rarely travelled without his violin. In his later years he studied musical composition with French organist and composer Charles Widor, and passages of a symphony he wrote were performed in Nice in 1904.

Following his first trip to Cairo and Algeria in 1872-3, Bridgman turned almost exclusively to painting scenes of Algerian life. Putting up his family in the Hôtel de l'Orient in the Mustapha Supérieur quarter of Algiers, he used the services of a local guide, Belkassem, to gain access to private houses from which he would watch and paint daily life. Bridgman's experiences in Algeria and his prolific creative output led to the publication in 1891 of a book, Winters in Algiers, illustrated with woodcuts modelled along the artist's drawings and paintings.