Frederick Arthur Bridgman, c. 1900

Bridgman was a born in Tuskegee, Alabama and died in Rouen, France in 1928. Joining other talented American painters, such as Thomas Eakins, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) from 1866 to 1870. Bridgman regularly participated in the Paris Salon and, in 1907, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur. During his long and prolific career, Bridgman traveled to Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Turkey and Syria to paint and document local customs.

Frederick Arthur Bridgman. Aicha, a Woman of Morocco (1883) Oil on canvas. 21 1/2 BY 10 1/2IN. Newark Museum, New Jersey.

Some may object to labelling Bridgman as a "forgotten" master. His paintings regularly turn up at auctions and he is familiar to many nineteenth-century painting dealers and collectors. I submit that he is forgotten for two reasons: first, his work is rarely recognized on its own merit and second, his tendency to be self-promotional has deterred others from telling his story.

Frederick Arthur Bridgman. After the Bath. Oil on canvas. 31 BY 25 3/4IN. Private collection.

After nearly a century of obscurity, Orientalist painters have found their way into the limelight. Paintings by Bridgman, Max Ernst (Austrian, 1891-1976), and John Frederick Lewis (British, 1805-1876) have sold for higher prices at auction and, recently, been the subject of a major exhibition at Tate Britain. According to conversations I have had with auctioneers at Sotheby's and Christie's in London, increased interest has been driven by Middle-eastern collectors who often see orientalist paintings as the sole visual record of their nineteenth-century cultures.

As a result, interest in Bridgman's paintings is rarely driven by an appreciation for his skill or creativity. Rather, Bridgman is grouped into a genre. To my knowledge, since his death, there has not been a biography or single exhibition in a major museum dedicated exclusively to Bridgman.

Frederick Arthur Bridgman. Abu Simbel (1874) Oil on canvas. 20 BY 30IN. Private Collection.

In the 1870s, Bridgman traveled to Algeria on a painting expedition. In addition to canvases, Bridgman took copious notes that, eventually, became a feature article in Atlantic Monthly Magazine. The article, along with reproductions of paintings from his trip have recently been reprinted in book format.

Frederick Arthur Bridgeman. Crossing an Oasis, with the Atlas Mountains in the Distance, Morocco (1919) Oil on Canvas. 13 BY 19 1/4IN. Private collection.

After World War I, Bridgman settled in Normandy, France. Although he continued to paint, his paintings were no longer shown publicly. He died in 1928 in near obscurity. Links

• A blog dedicated to Bridgman with several images.
• Frederick Arthur Bridgman at the Anthenaeum includes over 35 images of Bridgman's paintings available for free use.
• A longer biography on the artists taken from the book Les Orientalists de L'École Américaine by Gerald M. Ackerman.

Books

• Winters in Algeria by Frederick Arthur Bridgman
• Orientalists by Kristian Davies
• The Orientalists by Lynne Thornton

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Photograph of the Painter (a. 1910)

By the end of his life, Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz (1848-1921) had served as the Director of the Prado Museum, won numerous international awards, including the French Legion of Honor, and held the position of the Director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. He is best remembered for having taught the painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida in Rome, and for the painting Doña Juana La Loca (Joanna the Mad) that galvanized a new generation of history painters in Spain and toured several European nations as a masterpiece.

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Self-Portrait (1917). Oil on canvas. 4.5 BY 35.5CM. Madrid, Prado Museum.

Pradilla was heavily influenced by Velázquez, Titian, El Greco and Ribera, all of whom are well represented in the Prado Collection. Even late in life, he regularly copied Old Master paintings in order to improve his own. This was accompanied by his lifelong dedication to the study of Greek and Roman texts, along with Spanish historical documents which inspired many of his paintings. He was well noted by friends for a large library of rare books and an ability to speak several languages.

Early Life and Training

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Rape of the Sabines (c. 1873-1874). Oil on canvas. 115 BY 150CM. Madrid, Universidad de Complutense, Facultad de Bellas Artes. Made as part of the audition to receive a scholarship to study in Rome.

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz was born to a poor family in Zaragoza, Spain. He was accepted to the local Institute of Zaragoza. But, due to a lack of money, he was unable to pay for his own supplies and tuition and had to end his studies there.

Thereafter, Pradilla joined the workshop of the stage scenery painter Mariano Pescador. The work gave him needed money which he used to attend the Fine Arts School in the Academy of San Luis in Zaragoza and, eventually, move to Madrid.

In Madrid, he continued to make a living painting scenery for theaters. His ambition and talent eventually won him a place in the School of Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. In addition to his classwork, the records of the Prado show that, beginning in 1869, he regularly visited the Collection in order to copy Old Master paintings.

Rome

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Náufragos or "Survivors of the Shipwreck" (1876). Oil on canvas. Madrid, Ayuntamiento.

Pradilla was among the first group of students given government scholarships to study at the new Spanish Academy in Rome, founded in 1873, but opened to students in 1874. The Spanish School in Rome would become the most important center for artistic training in Spain and Pradilla would become one of its most influential students (1874-1877) and teachers (1877-1896).

During three years, students were required to produce copies of Old Master paintings and Greek and Roman statuary, in addition to regular travel in order to encourage a broader perspective. While a student, Pradilla traveled extensively, visiting Venice, Florence, Milan, Piza, Paris, and six cities in Germany.

The culmination of each student's study in at the Spanish Academy in Rome was a large, multi-figural history painting. In Pradilla's case his final painting for the Academy would be an internationally-praised work.

DoJuana la Loca (Joanna the Mad Queen)

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Doña Juana la Loca (1877). Oil on Canvas 340 by 500CM. Madrid, Prado Museum.

The painting depicts a scene from the life of the Spanish Royal Joanna (1479-1555), the second daughter of King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain.

After the death of her husband, Joanna accompanied the body to its place of burial. Refusing to sleep or leave the casket, she kept vigil over the casket in torrential rain and winds. This, combined with other behaviors deemed as eccentric, estranged her from other royals. She spent the last years of her live in a convent.

Pradilla's portrayal is notable for its underlying classical composition combined with Realism. In addition to his strong figural work, the painting reflects Pradilla's understanding of landscape. He was a member of the Spanish Watercolorist Society, which specialized in disseminating landscape skills, and a student of the famous Spanish landscape painter Carlos de Haes. Several sketches for the landscape of Juana la Loca reveal the enormous amount of work he did to effectively portray the atmosphere, clouds, and ground convincingly.

End of Life

Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Landscape (a. 1900)

Pradilla served as the Director of the Spanish Academy in Rome for only eight months, from September, 1881 to April, 1882. He also served as the Director of the Prado for a short thirteen months, from January, 1896 to February, 1897, after an important work by Murillo, St. Anne Teaching the Virgin Mary, was stolen. (It was recovered in 1911).

During the last years of his life, both the national government and the government of his birth, Zaragoza, would commission several works. But, he never repeated the success of Doña Juana la Loca, although he continued to paint in the same style.

Retrospectives of his life and works were held in Madrid (1948 and 1985) and Zaragoza (1985). Three of his major works are now held in the Prado, but the majority are held in private hands or regional museums and government buildings, especially in his native Zaragoza.

Julien Dupre, French, 1851-1910. The Gleaners (1880). Private Collection. Dupre is one of many artists that should be better remembered.

With the intent of helping to resurrect appreciation for some of the great and less-remembered artists of the past, I plan on regularly writing about what I will call "Forgotten Masters."

Many nineteenth-century artists still sit in obscurity, not for lack of brilliance, but due to the shifting winds of culture at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The meteoric rise of Impressionism and other artistic movements left many academic artists, still at the peak of their talents, in the dust.

As we have distanced ourselves from changing fashions of those times, painters like Ingres, Gerome, Bouguereau, Eakins, Leighton, and Alma-Tadema have become more well known and received the recognition their works deserve through major exhibitions, scholarly books, and, finally, coffee-table books (the ultimate evidence that an artist has "made it").

Yet we have only scratched the surface of nineteenth-century painting. According to a friend of mine, Dr. Vern Swanson, there were over 300,000 painters working in France in the nineteenth century.

300,000!

(For that number to sink in, here is an exercise: name as many French-Impressionist painters as you can. I come up with about 12 off the top of my head.)

Two websites, in particular, have been key in offering information and images of these artists:

• The Art Renewal Center: www.artrenwal.org
• Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide: www.19thc-artworldwide.org

If you have any nineteenth-century artists that you feel have been neglected and would like to see me post on them, please feel free to write me: mjc "at" beardedroman.com. Because my research is currently focused on Spain, many of the artists I will begin with in the series will be Spanish.

Starting tomorrow, look for posts tagged and titled "Forgotten Master."