Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Dedicated to fellow American Orientalist painter Charles Sprague Pearce, this work was no doubt a gift in memory of Bridgman's and Pearce's trip to Cairo in the winter of 1873-74. Bridgman had met Pearce, a pupil of Leon Bonnat in Paris who regularly wintered in Algiers, in the south of France the previous winter. They set off from Marseille and by December 1873 were settled in Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, both busy painting in the streets of the city. Together they hired a dahebeah to sail up the Nile. The journey lasted over three months, during which they reached the second cataract and visited Abu Simbel. Bridgman returned to Paris with over 300 sketches and studies, renting a studio in the same building as Pearce and another American, E. H. Blashfield, in the Boulevard Clichy.