The Diversion of an Assyrian King

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The Diversion of an Assyrian King: Frederick Arthur Bridgman

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Frederick Arthur Bridgman Oil Painting - The Diversion of an Assyrian King

Keywords: Diversion, Assyrian, King

Work Overview: The Diversion of an Assyrian King
Frederick Arthur Bridgman
oil on canvas
44 1/2 by 92 in.
113 by 233.7 cm
LOT SOLD. 485,000 USD

"In drawing and in general execution, the firm and practical hand of the master is everywhere visible [in The Diversion of an Assyrian King] . . . Gérôme himself might be proud to sign this page.” (Hooper, 1878)
These words, written at the time of this picture’s exhibition at the 1878 Paris Salon, summarized the opinion of many who encountered Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s art. A pupil of the great Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Bridgman had made his name one year earlier, winning a medal at the 1877 Salon and a place at the Paris Exposition Universelle with the archaeologically exacting Les Funerailles d’une momie (location unknown). Like that work, and true to Gérôme’s artistic principles, The Diversion of an Assyrian King was based on hundreds of sketches made abroad, an impressive personal collection of ancient artifacts, architectural fragments, and historical costumes, and countless hours of scholarly research. Bridgman’s many visits to the Louvre and the British Museum are evidenced by the precisely copied Assyrian wall reliefs in the background of the picture (it may, in fact, have been the celebrated lion hunt series of bas reliefs from Nimrod, ancient Nineveh, and Khorsabad, displayed since 1847 at these museums, that inspired the gripping subject of Bridgman’s work), while his assiduous study of large folios of engravings produced in the wake of the astonishing discoveries in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) of Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) and Paul-Émile Botta (1802-1870) in the 1840s and the much-publicized efforts of the Englishman George Smith (1840-1876) to find ancient Assyrian accounts of the Deluge in the early 1870s, are reflected elsewhere in the composition.
The Diversion of an Assyrian King was the second of three highly acclaimed historical reconstructions that Bridgman painted in three consecutive years, and its progress was closely followed in the media. The light palette and vigorous brushwork in certain passages of the picture – trademarks of Bridgman’s maturing style – were widely commented upon by critics upon its debut, perhaps due to the uncommonness of these formal elements in academic history painting. Such idiosyncrasies, along with a fine balance between appealing spectacle and fearsome violence, are today what distinguish Bridgman’s theatrical tableaux from those of his mentor Gérôme (see Pollice Verso, 1872, Phoenix Art Museum), and from those of his peers, especially Bridgman’s friend Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), who also capitalized on contemporaries’ increasing fascination with the ancient world.
This catalogue note was written by Dr. Emily M. Weeks.

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Frederick Arthur Bridgman

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