American Painter, 1847-1928 was an American artist, born in Tuskegee, Alabama. An American Southerner, born in Tuskeegee, Alabama, the son of a physician, Bridgman would become one of the United States' most well-known and well-regarded painters and become known as one of the world's most talented "Orientalist" painters. He began as a draughtsman in New York City, for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerôme. Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large and important composition, The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile, in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor. Other paintings by him were An American Circus in Normandy, Procession of the Bull Apis (now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and a Rumanian Lady (in the Temple collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). In 1867, Bridgman entered the studio of the noted academic painter Jean-Leon Gerôme (1824-1904), where he was deeply influenced by Gerôme's precise draftsmanship, smooth finishes, and concern for Middle-Eastern themes. (Bridgman would even become known as "the American Gerôme.") No mere imitator, however, Bridgman would later adopt a more naturalistic aesthetic, emphasizing bright colors and painterly brushwork. Bridgman made his first trip to North Africa between 1872 and 1874, dividing his time between Algeria and Egypt. There he executed approximately three hundred sketches, which became the source material for several later oil paintings. Additional visits to the region throughout the 1870s and 1880s allowed him to amass a collection of costumes, architectural pieces, and objets d'art, which often appear in his paintings. (Amusingly, John Singer Sargent noted that Bridgman's overstuffed studio, along with the Eiffel Tower, were Paris's must-see attractions.) Though Bridgman maintained a lifelong connection to France, his popularity in America never waned. Indeed, in 1890, the artist had a one-man show of over 400 pictures in New York's 5th Avenue galleries. When the show moved to Chicago's Art Institute, it contained only 300 works - testimony to the high number of sales Bridgman had made.  Related Paintings of Frederick Arthur Bridgman :. | Pharaohs army engulfed | An evening gathering at a North-African encampment | Procession in Honor of Isis | Fete du Prophete au cimetiere de Blidah (mk32) | In a Village El Biar Algeria |
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Salomon Rombouts
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1650-1702
John Macallan Swan
British Academic Painter, 1847-1910 was an English painter and sculptor. John Macallan Swan was born in Brentford, Middlesex in 1847. He received his art training first in England at the Worcester and Lambeth schools of art and the Royal Academy schools, and subsequently in Paris, in the studios of Jean-L??on G??rôme and Emmanuel Fr??miet. He began to exhibit at the Academy in 1878, and was elected associate in 1894 and academician in 1905. He was appointed a member of the Dutch Water-Colour Society in 1885; and associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1896 and full member in 1899. A master of the oil, water-colour and pastel mediums, an accomplished painter and a skilful draughtsman, he ranks also as a sculptor of distinguished ability. He has treated the human figure with notable power, but it is by his representations of the larger wild animals, mainly the felidae, that he chiefly established his reputation; in this branch of practice he has scarcely a rival. His picture "The Prodigal Son," bought for the Chantrey collection in 1889, is in the National Gallery of British Art.
MIJTENS, Jan
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1614-1670 Nephew of Daniel Mijtens I. He was the son of Daniel's elder brother David, a saddle-maker in The Hague. Jan may have learnt to paint from his uncle Isaac Mijtens. After 1634 he may have trained with his uncle Daniel, who had by then returned to The Hague; Jan married Daniel's daughter Anna in 1642. In 1639 he had been admitted to The Hague's guild of painters, of which he became a governor in 1656. In the latter year he helped to found the painters' society De Pictura; from 1667-8 he was a governor of this society and from 1669-70 its dean.