Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Sale: Christie's, London, 17 November 1994, lot 15
Sale: Gros & Delettrez, Paris, 13 December 2010, lot 27
Private collection, UK (sale: Sotheby's, London, 8 April 2014, lot 13)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Possibly, Buffalo, New York, Pan-American Exhibition, 1901, no. 218 (as Religious Fete at Blidah)
Nice, Société des Beaux-Arts (label on the reverse)

Lynne Thornton, Women as Portrayed in Orientalist Painting, Paris, 1985, p. 108, illustrated

The Day of the Prophet, known as Mawlid, is celebrated on either the twelfth or seventeenth day of Rabia al Awal, the third month of the Muslim calendar, roughly coinciding with January. Mawlid also provided a framework for female involvement. Women often participated in the celebrations outside the mosque rituals. The present work shows a congregation of women dressed in their ritual drapery. It was painted a year after Bridgman's larger work of the same subject, depicting Algerian women burning candles in the cemetry of Oued El-Kebir outside Blidah, in Algeria.