![Frederick Arthur Bridgman - Dans une Ville de Campagne Alger [1888]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7629/16344330333_7c7f88be40_o.jpg)
Dans une ville de campagne Alger depicts a favourite theme in Bridgman’s Orientalist oeuvre – the leisurely pursuits of harem women. By the late 1880s, the artist was creating major exhibition works in which these activities took place out-of-doors, a decision compelled by his increasing interest in the ever-changing qualities of light and atmosphere in the Middle East and, in particular, in his beloved Algeria. While the narrative aspects of his pictures increasingly became an excuse for painting the sun-drenched white city of Algiers and its neighbouring towns, and his style looser and more impressionistic, the ethnographic interests that marked his early career were not forgotten. Bridgman’s attention to costume and accessory, as well as to both the significant and more mundane aspects of daily life, provide a valuable record of some of the facets of Algerian culture that were, in the wake of increasing Western contact and influence, most at risk of disappearing.
[Sotheby’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 122.9 x 162.6 cm]