Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bridgman, Frederic A.
BRIDGMAN, Frederic A., figure painter, born at Tuskegee, Alabama, Nov., 1847. His father died when he was three years old, and at the age of ten his mother took him to the Northern States, where he resided for a few years in Massachusetts. He then entered the American Bank Note Company (New York) to learn engraving, residing at Brooklyn, where he studied painting in evening art-schools. Although he made rapid progress as an engraver, he preferred to adopt painting as his art, and so resigned his position in the Bank Note Company; and in 1866, assisted by friends, went to Paris, where he studied under Gérôme in the École des Beaux-Arts for three years. In 1869, and again in 1870, he spent some time in Brittany. In 1871 he passed six months in London, and the next two years in the Pyrenees, on the Spanish border. The winter of 1872–73 was passed in Algiers, and that of 1873–74 in Egypt, Nubia, and on the Nile. In 1875 he received a medal in the Paris Salon, and also one at the International Exhibition of 1878. Soon after he was made a member of the Legion of Honour. He still resides at Paris. Among his pictures are "Up Early," "Girls in the Way," "Apollo bearing off Cyrene," "Interior of a Harem," "The Funeral of the Mummy," "Illusions of High Life," "Bringing in the Corn," "The American Circus in Paris," "In the Pyrenees," "The Nubian Story-Teller," "Donkey-Boy of Cairo," "Kybelian Woman," and "Planting Rape in Normandy."