Frederick Arthur Bridgman was born in Alabama, USA, 1847 just prior to the Civil War. At the age of three, Frederick's father, a doctor, died. His mother sensing the Civil War tensions moved her two sons to Boston. Soon afterwards they moved again, to New York. Frederick, who was showing artistic talent, joined the American Banknote Company as an apprentice engraver.

Bridgman, preferring to paint, took evening drawing classes at the Brooklyn Art Association and the National Academy of Design. In 1865 and 1866 Bridgeman exhibited works at the Brooklyn Art Association. With the sponsorship of a group of Brooklyn businessmen, he set out for Paris, but settled Pont-Avent, Brittany which was home to an American artist colony under the leadership of Robert Wylie.

With the help of his American friend, Thomas Eakins, in the autumn of 1866, Bridgman joined the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris, where he studied for the next four years.

Bridgman spent several years traveling to Spain and North Africa. He returned to Paris with numerous paintings of Algerian scenes. The response in Paris was very favorable. During the years of 1885-90, Bridgman spent his time between Paris and Algeria, bringing back over four hundred sketches and studies. He rented a studio and made his reputation as an Orientalist painter.

Bridgman had five works displayed at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The following year he had a personal exhibition, showing 400 of his paintings in New York. When it moved on to Chicago it contained less than a hundred of these works - evidence of good sales. This enabled him to expand his Parisian home on the Boulevard Malesherbes. Its extravagant decor in classical and oriental style led the artist John Singer Sargent to say that it was one of the two sights worth visiting Paris to see; the other being the Eiffel tower!

In 1907 he became an Officer of the French Legion of Honour. After the First World War his popularity declined and he moved away from Paris to Lyons-la-Forêt in Normandy where he continued to paint until he died in 1928, almost forgotten by his former admiring public.