FREDERICK A. BRIDGMAN

FREDERICK A. BRIDGMANBy Lillian Kendrick Byrn

By Lillian Kendrick Byrn

Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right hands have motion in them, and to do it whether the issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the name will ever be possible to you; while in once forming the resolution that your work is to be well done, life is really won here and forever.—John Ruskin.

These words of the greatest art critic of modern times have been the inspiration of Mr. Bridgman’s work ever since, as a youth of nineteen, he commenced his artistic career as draughtsman in the American Bank Note Company, of New York. After six months’ experience in this department he was transferred to the vignette department, where he displayed the same fidelity and ability which has ever characterized his work. His hours were from nine until five, but he rose at four and painted until eight each morning and each evening he returned to his home to paint until a late hour. Occupying, as he now does, the enviable position of being a medallist of the Paris Salon several times over, not to mention medals from Münich, London and Berlin and the decoration of the Cross of the Legion of Honor and similar honors, Mr. Bridgman owes his eminence as much to his indefatigable work and his determination as to his talent.

There have been artists distinguished from the fact that their genius was bizarre or their point of view extraordinary, and others preëminent because they solved, with the ease of genius, the general problems of their art. It is to the latter class that this Southern painter belongs—the class which expresses clearly and forcefully the essential life elements, in contradistinction to the eccentric, exaggerated striving after the weird, which marks the work of the others, whose success is at best, ephemeral.

There is contained in a picture nothing less than all that it is capable of inspiring to our thoughts and imagination. Art, like nature, can only show us what we are capable of seeing and it is this faculty for showing not only the subtle sense of atmosphere to the critics but the beauty of life to all observers, which marks Mr. Bridgman’s pictures.

Mr. Bridgman’s studies in Paris were made at the celebrated Suisse atelier and at the Ecôle des Beaux Arts, under Gérôme. He painted in Brittany several years, and in 1872 he went to Algeria, where the beauty of the African scenes inspired him to write, as well as to paint. HisWinters in Algeria, illustrated with his own sketches, was brought out by a leading American publishing house and was pronounced by Sir Lambert Playfair, thirty years British Consul at Algiers, to be the best book ever issued on this subject. HisBurial of a Mummy on the Nile, painted in Africa, isowned by James Gordon Bennett. It was this picture which brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, as well as a medal, when exhibited at the Paris Exposition, 1878. At the second Exposition, held in 1889, he was made President of the American Section of Fine Arts. Other paintings owned by Americans areThe Family Bath, in Mrs. Ayres’ gallery in New York, andThe Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis, in the Corcoran Gallery, at Washington.

MR. F. A. BRIDGMAN

The Bridgman studio is one of the most interesting in Paris. The door is devoid of bell or knocker, but onpushing it open a zither-like instrument is struck, producing vibrant chords of harmony. A small ante-chamber containing a Renaissance marble and casts of Donatello’s angels opens into the studios, which consist of three rooms, charmingly surrounding an Orientalpatio, with mosaic pavement and blue-tiled fountain and walled in by lattice work from Cairo. Moorish and Arabic mosque lamps and Persian and Indian tapestries give a complete Eastern tone to the court. The principal room is ornamented quite to the lofty ceiling with panels, hangings and furniture of the twelfth century, or Renaissance period. The keynote of this room is dull green, mingled with the brown of the old woodwork and the gold of its decorations. From this room one passes by way of the fountain, whose gold fish and lotus flowers tempt one to linger, to a quaint stairway of carved oak, which leads to the Egyptian and Greek rooms above. The sanctuary of the ancient Egyptian period is announced, so to speak, by the white lotus bud columns, supporting bas-reliefs of flamingoes and a boat carrying twenty donkeys and two men, crossing the Nile. At each side of the entrance statues of Isis and Osiris, in green basalt, sit as placidly as four thousand years ago.

IN A GARDEN OF MUSTAPHA, ALGIERSParis Salon, 1906

IN A GARDEN OF MUSTAPHA, ALGIERS

Paris Salon, 1906

While a large part of Mr. Bridgman’s furnishings have been collected during his travels, they have been supplemented by friezes, furniture and ornaments designed by the artist in keeping with his idea of giving each room a complete and distinct individuality. This character note is especially dominant in the Egyptian room, with its painted and gilded cedar wood chairs and its bas-reliefs of Egyptian life. The coloring is dark blue, relieved by gilding in the decorations and hieroglyphics, and lighted by electric lotus flowers.

In the Greek room a frieze of black and terra cotta, reproduced from theold Etruscan vases, runs round the ceiling. Over the mantel stands the frontal of a temple, copied after the lines of the Parthenon. Minerva presides in this shrine, guarded by small Tanagra figurines on the shelf below. There are also some fragments of Etruscan ware. It is a wonderful place to dream in, and a hard place to leave, the more so as Mr. Bridgman exercises hospitality on a scale of typical Southern generosity. There is something in the personality of the man himself—a certain candor or simplicity which, in spite of the cosmopolitan finish of world-wide travel and experience, in spite of honors and acclamation, remains typical of his native section. Tuskegee, Alabama, is his birthplace, his father being a physician of note throughout the state.

ARAB CAVALIERS, ALGIERS

BesidesWinters in Algeria, Mr. Bridgman has written several books in French, among themAnarchy in ArtandThe Idol and the Ideal, the latter being a poem in blank verse, whosedramatis personaeare an artist and a young girl.

Nor do painting and writing complete the list of the Alabamian’s talents. He is a devoted musician, finding rest and inspiration in the study of harmonic sound. He always carries with him a musical notebook, jotting down, wherever he may be, any melody or detail of orchestration that strikes him. He is now finishing a symphony, parts of which have been played in classical concerts at Vichy and at Monte Carlo. With such varied gifts it is not surprising that his pictures have a lyrical, musical quality, pulsating with the rhythmical movement of life. He has the supreme painter’s gift of conveying not only the effect of air and sunlight, but also the psychic atmosphere of a scene, the glamor, the romance of the Orient.

Mr. Bridgman says, and his views are indicative of that noble discontent which incites artists to yet higher efforts, “The actual picture is never the perfect one. It is always thenextundertaking in which shall be realized the qualities so much sought after.”

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