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 :. | In a Village El Biar Algeria | Pharaohs army engulfed | River Landscape with Deer | The Day of the Prophet at Oued el Kebir | An Interesting Game |
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PUGET, Pierre
French Baroque Era Sculptor, 1620-1694 French sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect. Puget was one of the outstanding artists of his century, but his style, formed by the Italian Baroque, did not however always find favour in the classicizing atmosphere of the French court, where Jean-Baptiste Colbert would describe him in 1670 as 'a man who goes a little too fast, and whose imagination is a little too heated'. Although the son of a master mason, Simon Puget (d 1623), Puget was largely self-taught, as were his brother Gaspard Puget (1615-after 1683), an architect, and his son Fran?ois Puget (1651-1707), a painter. Apprenticed in 1634 to a wood-carver, Jean Roman, in Marseille, he left in 1638 for Italy, spending some years in Florence and Rome close to Pietro da Cortona, presumably as a stuccoist and painter, although his part in the decoration of the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Cortona's main project of these years, is not clear. From 1643 he practised sculpture and painting at the Toulon Arsenal, France's largest naval shipyard, where he was appointed to the wood-carving workshop: around 1645, for instance, he designed and supervised the decoration of the ship Le Magnifique (in 1646 renamed La Reine; destr.). According to some sources, in 1646 he made a second journey to Italy,
Pieter de Hooch
1629-1684 Dutch Pieter de Hooch Galleries De Hooch was born in Rotterdam to Hendrick Hendricksz de Hooch, a bricklayer, and Annetge Pieters, a midwife. He was the eldest of five children and outlived all of his siblings. He studied art in Haarlem under the landscape painter, Nicolaes Berchem. Beginning in 1650, he worked as a painter and servant for a linen-merchant and art collector named Justus de la Grange. His service for the merchant required him to accompany him on his travels to The Hague, Leiden, and Delft, to which he eventually moved. It is likely that de Hooch handed over most of his works to la Grange during this period in exchange for board and other benefits, as this was a common commercial arrangement for painters at the time, and a later inventory recorded that la Grange possessed eleven of his paintings. De Hooch was married in Delft in 1654 to Jannetje van der Burch, by whom he fathered seven children. While in Delft, de Hooch is also believed to have learned from the painters Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes, who were both early members of the Delft School. He became a member of the painters' guild of Saint Luke in 1655, and had moved to Amsterdam by 1661. The early work of de Hooch, like most young painters of his time, was mostly composed of scenes of soldiers in stables and taverns, though he used these to develop great skill in light, color, and perspective rather than to explore an interest in the subject matter. After beginning his family in the mid-1650s, he switched his focus to domestic scenes and family portraits. His work showed astute observation of the mundane details of everyday life while also functioning as well-ordered morality tales. These paintings often exhibited a sophisticated and delicate treatment of light similar to those of Vermeer, who lived in Delft at the same time as de Hooch. 19th century art historians had assumed that Vermeer had been influenced by de Hooch's work, but the opposite is now believed.
DOLCI, Carlo
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1616-ca.1686 was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence, known for highly finished religious pictures, often repeated in many versions. He was born in Florence, on his mother's side the grandson of a painter. Although he was precocious and apprenticed at a young age to Jacopo Vignali, Dolci was not prolific. "He would take weeks over a single foot", according to his biographer Baldinucci.His painstaking technique made him unsuited for large-scale fresco painting. He painted chiefly sacred subjects, and his works are generally small in scale, although he made a few life-size pictures. He often repeated the same composition in several versions, and his daughter, Agnese Dolci, also made excellent copies of his works. Dolci was known for his piety. It is said that every year during Passion Week he painted a half-figure of the Saviour wearing the Crown of Thorns. In 1682, when he saw Giordano,