Estimated Price:

   £   

Realised Price:

   £   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, MASSACHUSETTS FREDERICK ARTHUR BRIDGMAN AMERICAN, 1847-1928 HALT AT TANGIERS

signed FA Bridgman and dated 1884 (lower left)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Private Collection, London, 1890 (acquired directly from the artist)
Arthur Tooth & Sons, New York (acquired from the above)
WIlliam T. Forbes, Massachusetts, 1902 (acquired from the above)
Katharine F. Erskine (by descent from the above, her father, 1921)
Harriet M. Wood and Louise T. Erskine (by descent from the above, their mother, 1990)
(thence by descent to the present owner, their nephew)
CATALOGUE NOTE

Late Nineteenth century Americans were fascinated with the Near East, particularly as envisioned by Bridgman and his fellow Orientalists. Their works served as vibrant postcards of the exotic culture of a distant people or, for more adventurous viewers, as souvenirs of actual travel to North Africa and the Middle East. Certainly, William T. Forbes, an early owner of The Halt at Tangiers, would have appreciated the work's alluring visual details -- sun-drenched walls, sandy paths, the interplay between desert travelers and their colorful traditional dress -- as well as its value as a type of historical record. After viewing a large exhibition of Bridgman works, Forbes purchased The Halt at Tangiers, bringing it home to hang among a family of historians. Forbes, long a collector of fossils, coins, and oriental rugs, and traveller to Turkey and the Near East, inspired a love of the past in his children. His daughter, Katharine Forbes Erskine, who later inherited the painting, explained that her parents "did a lot of reading out loud to us... not only fairy tales, but also fairly grown-up books;" her sister, Esther Forbes was the acclaimed author of several novels, notably the award winning Johnny Tremain (1943). For this family, as for so many others, the painted view of Tangiers provided a port of entry to explore far off lands -- which Bridgman himself did so frequently throughout the end of the nineteenth century. Travel abroad was an important choice for the artist, as it quite literally expanded his horizons. However, in choosing to paint his travelogues, Bridgman created works that could be appreciated by a Western audience. As with this composition, the artist, a student of Gérôme (see lots 10 and 13), presents a rendition of a French Orientalist tradition that often mixed elements of ethnographic interest with an exotic drama. While the artist and viewer may be able to identify the costume or architecture of the scene, one cannot precisely know the narrative. From the sleeping dogs of the foreground to the turbaned man of the doorway, there is an elusiveness to the scene, inviting one to expand on reality to create a personalized vision. In this quality, the work is particularly successful, enticing to lovers of history, to aficionados of Academic painting and to those enthralled by a great story.