Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Private Collection, circa 1940s
By descent to the present owner (his grandson), New Jersey

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in lovely condition. The canvas is unlined and the paint layer is clean and varnished. There are retouches visible under ultraviolet light in a few spots of the darkest colors in the archway on the left side and around the head of the figure on the horse. Elsewhere, only a few other tiny dots have been applied and the painting should be hung as is.
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In 1889, Frederick Arthur Bridgman exhibited five works at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, including Marché aux chevaux au Caire (present location unknown), a work that combined his interests in contemporary Arab street life and equestrian subjects.  The present work can be considered a variation on this important theme.

The painting depicts a Spahi, or member of the French-led Algerian cavalry, waiting patiently for his companion.  His distinctive red cloak, along with the saddle of the gray horse beside him, with its high pommels and wide iron stirrups, points to Bridgman's appreciation of ethnographic detail, while the impressionistic application of paint alludes to Bridgman's stylistic evolution.  Bridgman's paintings after 1881 exhibit a 'sketch aesthetic' that was widely applauded in France and, after its 'official' introduction to Impressionism in 1886, in America as well.  (This was the year that Durand-Ruel held an exhibition of French Impressionist art and opened his gallery in New York.)  As once contemporary critic wrote, 'Here [in Bridgman's work] were vivid impressions of actual things, and vivid ways of recording those impressions.  Here was feeling for color, and for tone, and for atmosphere, and for light and dark.  Here were breadth of touch, rapidity of handling, and strong effects.  Here were vigor and earnestness that were not deliberation . . . studies undertaken . . .with an artist's wish to fix forever the fleeting aspect that had charmed him' (van Rensselaer, American Art Review 2, part 2, June 1881, 54; and p. 188 of American Art and American Art Collection reprint).