Although Frederick Bridgman lived most of his life as a Parisian expatriate, he always remained a devoted and active member of the National Academy. Born into the family of an itinerant Massachusetts physician, Bridgman lost his father at age three. The family remained in Alabama, and at age ten, Bridgman was already studying art at the Tuskeegee Seminary. His family home was burned to the ground during the Civil War; two years later, Bridgman moved to New York to pursue a living as engraver.
In New York, he studied in Brooklyn and at the Academy, where he registered for the antique class for two years beginning in 1863. He obtained work at the American Banknote Company, but broke his contract there in 1866 in order to go to study in Paris. After a brief period at the Atelier Suisse, with the help of Thomas Eakins he entered the class of Jean-L‚on G‚r"me. Bridgman stayed with G‚r"me for four years, spending his summers in Brittany with the American artists at Pont-Aven. He showed in the Salon for the first time in 1868 and made his debut in an Academy annual in 1871.
Bridgman traveled a great deal, and in 1871 he left Paris to spend time in the Pyr‚n‚es Mountains. There he painted peasant scenes and met the Spanish artist, Mariano Fortuny. His first trip to North Africa occurred in 1872 and lasted into the following year. With fellow artist Charles S. Pearce, he visited Algeria and Egypt, making a total of some 300 sketches. Bridgman was thus introduced to the Orientalist themes which became his mainstay for most of the rest of his career. He returned to Paris where he met Bostonian Florence Mott Baker. They were married in 1877.
Bridgman's trip to North Africa was repeated several times in later years. He wrote a series of articles on his travels which appeared in Harper's in 1888 and were published in book form two years later as Winters in Algeria. In Paris, he transformed a stable behind his house at 144 rue Malesherbes into a sumptuous Oriental-style palace which he used as a studio. He collected exotic bric-a-brac and was photographed in costumes from his collection of Oriental garb.
In the United States, Bridgman's work was fairly well known in the 1870s, but it wasn't until his major one-man show in 1881 that he achieved real fame. Over 300 works were displayed at the American Art Gallery in New York, and sales made it a financial success. Bridgman, visited in New York for the occasion, was feted at a dinner attended by 123 artists. A similar retrospective exhibition occurred in 1887 at the Fine Arts Society in London; he was also a regular contributor to the Royal Academy exhibitions.
The Academy enjoyed the services of its celebrated member as its unofficial representative in Paris. During the 1890s, he accepted its assignment to purchase a substantial number of casts for the school, supervised scholarship students, and saw to the Academy's financial interests in the French capital.
In these later years, Bridgman's art broke a bit from the Orientalist mold; he painted classical figures, landscape, and decorative murals. He also wrote poetry, played the violin, composed music, and published an anti-impressionist tract entitled L'Anarchie dans l'art. In 1901, his wife died. He remarried four years later, to Marthe Jaeger. His last years were spent at Lyon-la-Foret.
