Footnotes

The American expatriate Frederick Arthur Bridgman is not well known for his figure paintings of the female nude, such as the present lot, although he was an esteemed Orientalist artist. In the past five decades several of his paintings of females, undressed or partially draped, have gone through the art market; usually they have been identified by auctioneers and art dealers as nudes, odalisques, or prostitutes, even though Bridgman never used such terminology. In the early 1880s he did exhibit several 'Bath' and 'After the Bath' scenes, but he showed those nudes from their back.

The term 'odalisque', from the French, became popular in the nineteenth century and in painting came to refer to the women in a harem, usually shown languidly resting on a bed or sedan in an Orientalist interior. Bridgman's nudes reclining are similar to one of his 1884 harem figures, in which the lower part of her body is wrapped in a white sheet (see for example An Odalisque, Sotheby's, London, 17 March 1995, lot 157). In his portrayals of such a figure, Bridgman positioned her parallel to the picture plane with her head near the left edge of the canvas and her feet at the right.

Except for two paintings dated 1882 and 1921, Bridgman left his paintings of the female nude undated. Based on his style and exhibition history, it is believed that he turned increasingly to such subjects late in his career. One reason for this absence in his early output was the puritanical culture that still prevailed in the United States where he was raised and where many of his patrons resided. Early on, he had learned from experience that paintings of Eastern women even attired in revealing diaphanous costumes would be rejected by New York audiences for being indecent, often referred to as too French. By the 1890s, however, the artist had become quite successful for his participation in European expositions, so he could depend on the patronage of more sophisticated international collectors. Bridgman still demonstrated some reluctance to delineate a naked woman, preferring to subtly hide his model's private parts by drapery or to obstruct the viewer's gaze through the pose of the woman's body or placement of her limbs. He thereby extolled the woman's beautiful flesh without offending his viewers.

Bridgman's masterly draughtsmanship of the female body in the present lot reflects his devotion to academic training. His inclusion of the model's navel and details of her face, which is partially hidden by the gold drape and shadows, are a testament to his realism. Yet, he purposely contrasted the profile of her back and legs against the darkness of the background to emphasize the woman's sensuality and fleshy curving body parts, especially her buttock and thigh. Such an exaggerated curved pelvis is characteristic of Bridgman's partially prostrated nudes. In fact, the present lot is similar to Bridgman's Day Dreams (present whereabouts unknown), exhibited as Le Songe at the 1892 Paris Salon and the following year at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and may have been the initial idea for Day Dreams.

We are grateful to Dr. Ilene Susan Fort for compiling this catalogue entry.