01 Paintings by the Orientalist Artists in the Nineteenth-Century, with footnotes, 27

Frederick Arthur Bridgman, 1847 - 1928, AMERICAN

WOMEN OF BLIDAH ON THE DAY OF THE PROPHET, c. 1900

Oil on canvas

66 by 54.5cm., 26 by 21½in.

Private collection

Estimated for US$80,000 - US$120,000 in May 2010

The Day of the Prophet, known as Mawlid, is celebrated on either the twelfth or seventeenth day of Rabia al Awal, the third month of the Muslim calendar, roughly coinciding with January. Mawlid also provided a framework for female involvement. Women often participated in the celebrations outside the mosque rituals. The present work shows a congregation of women dressed in their ritual drapery. It was painted a year after Bridgman's larger work of the same subject, depicting Algerian women burning candles in the cemetry of Oued El-Kebir outside Blidah, in Algeria. More on The Day of the Prophet

Blidah , today Blida, is the name of a city in Algeria. It is the capital of the province of the same name and is also called Ville des Roses ("City of Roses").

The city is located about 40 km south of the Algerian capital Algiers in a valley of Tellatlas. The coast of the Mediterranean is about 30 km away. In 1838 , Blidah was captured by French troops who set up a garrison there. In 1825 and 1867 , the city was destroyed by earthquakes. Today there is a university ( Université Saad Dahlab Blida ). More on Blidah

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (November 10, 1847 - 1928) was an American artist, born in Tuskegee, 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 Gerome. 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). More on Frederick Arthur Bridgman

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