The son of an itinerant doctor from Massachusetts, Frederic Arthur Bridgman was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. After his father’s death in 1850, Bridgman’s mother, concerned by growing North-South tensions, relocated the family to Boston. Shortly thereafter, they moved to New York, where beginning at the age of seventeen, Bridgman worked for two years as an apprentice draftsman at the American Bank Note Company, while studying at the Brooklyn Art Association and taking antique and life drawing classes at the National Academy of Design. In 1866, Bridgman moved to Paris, where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, studying for four years with Jean-Léon Gérôme, France’s leading painter of historical and Orientalist subjects. From 1873 to 1874, Bridgman traveled to Egypt, a trip that inspired his masterpiece Funeral of a Mummy (Speed Museum, Louisville, Kentucky), which was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1877. Bridgman became a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1881, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1888.
Primarily known for his exotic subjects, Robbing the Pigeon Roost (Chasing Doves) is a rare example of Bridgman’s interest in rustic themes. The painting was most likely produced during one of several summers Bridgman spent in Pont-Aven, the small village in Brittany which was home to an American artists’ colony under the charismatic leadership of Robert Wylie (1839-1877) who painted dramatic rural landscapes. Although paintings of mischievous children were popular in both Europe and America in the late nineteenth century, the subject of nest robbing may have been inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1568 panel The Peasant and the Nest Robber (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
