Frederick Arthur Bridgman (American painter) 1847 - 1928
The Sewing Lesson, 1870s
oil on canvas
84.5 x 67.5 cm. (33¼ x 26½ in.)
signed F. A. Bridgman lower left
private collection
Catalogue Note
The Sewing Lesson is an early painting by Bridgman painted in the rigorous and precise style that sets it apart from his later, more loosely painted works. Bridgman arrived in Paris from America in 1866, entering the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he honed his skills and under whose tutelage he developed the pictorial idiom exemplified in paintings like the present work. After a trip to Algeria and Egypt in 1872, Bridgman turned his attention to North African subjects. The Sewing Lesson was painted soon after that first journey, the vivid colours and fabrics, and the scene itself, a reflection of Bridgman's fascination with, and empathy towards, the culture he experienced there.
Bridgman spent ever more time in Algiers, even putting up his wife and family in the Hôtel de l'Orient in the Mustapha Supérieur quarter, and hiring a guide, Belkassem, to find him an entrée into private houses in which, and from which, to watch and paint daily life. From Algiers he wrote home: 'Here we have all the advantages of civilisation with quite enough in the picture line for anybody.' True to his academic training, Bridgman's finished paintings were worked up from sketches made on the spot, and the present work would have been no exception. A New York show of over three hundred of his works at the American Art Gallery in 1881 included finished canvases, but the major part of the exhibition consisted of sketches, praised for their 'frankness, their fidelity, their freshness, their beauty.'
Bridgman's cumulative experiences in Algeria and his prolific output led him in 1888 to publish a long and well-illustrated account of his stay in Algiers in Harper's Monthly Magazine; the success of the several articles led to the contract for a book, Winters in Algiers, illustrated with woodcuts after the artist's drawings and paintings.
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