Frederick Arthur Bridgman (American, 1847–1928) Fording the Stream, Algeria

Provenance: Sotheby's Parke-Bernet, New York, sale of February 5, 1977, lot 145.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

The Forbes Collection.

NOTE:

After studying for several years at the Brooklyn Art Association, Frederick Arthur Bridgman went on to the National Academy of Design, where he exhibited several works that caught the attention of several wealthy investors, who collectively decided to send the artist to Paris on a fully-paid educational trip to complete his training. After spending some time in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme, like many American expatriates before him, Bridgman travelled to Spain and North Africa in the fall of 1872- a colorful epiphany that impacted his painting for the rest of his career. He first visited Tangiers in Morocco and later settled in Algeria, where he rented a small studio in Biskra and started working en plein air. In this setting, the artist discovered a new light, full of rich pastel tones, which he sought to forever capture and render on his canvases as exemplified by Fording the Stream, an impressive and unusually large canvas which the artist executed in the 1880s.

At the time he created the work, Bridgman was at the height of his career, having turned away from the Academic training he received in Paris, experimenting with a new, brighter palette and looser brushwork that echo his overall enthusiasm for the Algerian culture. Landscapes such as the present one are rare in the artist’s oeuvre, within which Orientalist scenes focused more on specific domestic scenes. Here, the panoramic landscape is conceived as a pure play on light and shadows and the different atmospheric effects associated with a mellow and warm night in the desert.

The present painting was part of The Forbes Collection at the Palais Mendoub, Tangiers, Morocco from the 1970s to the early 1990s.