Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Private collection, France

In 1879 Bridgman set off from Constantine to Batna and Biskra in a loaded 'dust-in-crusted conveyance'. At first, he was underwhelmed ‘Biskra, although a collection of several distant villages – as the name signifies – all belonging to the one oasis interspersed and surrounded by its hundred thousand date-palms, appeared insignificant in the great expanse’. However, Bridgman's viewpoint shifted and his ever-present enthusiasm surfaced after exploring the town ‘the perfect stillness of the bright moonlight night and balmy temperature could not have been surpassed on a stroll in Paradise’. He witnessed '...the great cafe, all alive with clarionet and tam-tam, the centre of the night's rhythmic noise, more like a threshing-machine than music. This cafe ran through one block of buildings, with entrances on the two streets, and had been made gorgeous with hangings of all kinds of material and colour.' In this intimate work a seated musician holds a tam-tam in his hands.