Looking over the crises which have brought the world forward, and at the conditions which surround us at the present time, it is plain that the prospects for achieving what is now proposed are much better than those which surrounded the men who achieved the best things in the past, in every country which now has a part to play in the world’s political drama. The prospects of peace and justice not only within the existing political organizations, but in their relations with one another, were never so good as to-day, because the principle of Parliamentary Representative government has been applied during the past few centuries, to a greater or less degree, in almost every nation of the world, and this has prepared each of these nations to participate more easily and more effectively in the application of this principle to the affairs common to them all. While it is certainly true that under existing conditions each nation must make such preparation for its own preservation and the enforcement of its rights in the world as may seem to it necessary, considering the dangers which surround it, and while the Duke of Argyll is only stating the truth in saying that England will probably have to add more flags to her present array of military decorations, it is also true that the principle which can minimize the danger of and in due time destroy the necessity for war, has been discovered and is now in operation, to some degree, in almost every nation in the world. This principle has been put forward for practical application in the affairs common to all nations, has been accepted by men who have heretofore been entrusted with the highest positions of responsibility in the operation of their national government, who have demonstrated that the confidence reposed in them was not undeserved. It is, therefore, simply a question of working out the problem according to a known rule, as truly as when the rule in mathematics is known and the work of solving the problem according to it is all that remains to be done.
FREDERICK A. BRIDGMAN
By Lillian Kendrick Byrn
Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right hands have motion in them, and to do it whether the issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the name will ever be possible to you; while in once forming the resolution that your work is to be well done, life is really won here and forever.—John Ruskin.
These words of the greatest art critic of modern times have been the inspiration of Mr. Bridgman’s work ever since, as a youth of nineteen, he commenced his artistic career as draughtsman in the American Bank Note Company, of New York. After six months’ experience in this department he was transferred to the vignette department, where he displayed the same fidelity and ability which has ever characterized his work. His hours were from nine until five, but he rose at four and painted until eight each morning and each evening he returned to his home to paint until a late hour. Occupying, as he now does, the enviable position of being a medallist of the Paris Salon several times over, not to mention medals from Münich, London and Berlin and the decoration of the Cross of the Legion of Honor and similar honors, Mr. Bridgman owes his eminence as much to his indefatigable work and his determination as to his talent.
There have been artists distinguished from the fact that their genius was bizarre or their point of view extraordinary, and others preëminent because they solved, with the ease of genius, the general problems of their art. It is to the latter class that this Southern painter belongs—the class which expresses clearly and forcefully the essential life elements, in contradistinction to the eccentric, exaggerated striving after the weird, which marks the work of the others, whose success is at best, ephemeral.
There is contained in a picture nothing less than all that it is capable of inspiring to our thoughts and imagination. Art, like nature, can only show us what we are capable of seeing and it is this faculty for showing not only the subtle sense of atmosphere to the critics but the beauty of life to all observers, which marks Mr. Bridgman’s pictures.
Mr. Bridgman’s studies in Paris were made at the celebrated Suisse atelier and at the Ecôle des Beaux Arts, under Gérôme. He painted in Brittany several years, and in 1872 he went to Algeria, where the beauty of the African scenes inspired him to write, as well as to paint. His Winters in Algeria, illustrated with his own sketches, was brought out by a leading American publishing house and was pronounced by Sir Lambert Playfair, thirty years British Consul at Algiers, to be the best book ever issued on this subject. His Burial of a Mummy on the Nile, painted in Africa, is owned by James Gordon Bennett. It was this picture which brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, as well as a medal, when exhibited at the Paris Exposition, 1878. At the second Exposition, held in 1889, he was made President of the American Section of Fine Arts. Other paintings owned by Americans are The Family Bath, in Mrs. Ayres’ gallery in New York, and The Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis, in the Corcoran Gallery, at Washington.
MR. F. A. BRIDGMAN