[2] Bridgman's first destination in France was Pont-Aven in the Brittany region, where he stayed with a group of American artists, among them Robert Wylie.

While studying in the atelier of Gérôme, he became acquainted with his fellow students Harry Humphrey Moore and Thomas Eakins and also first came in contact with Orientalism.

Arriving in Cairo in December 1873, they worked in the city producing numerous sketches of the Islamic monuments, but also the street life, which was Bridgman's main inspiration.

During his trips, Bridgman executed approximately three hundred sketches, which became the source material for several later oil paintings that attracted immediate attention.

[1] The painting was later purchased by the famous American collector Wendell Cherry who donated it to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky in 1990.

When the show moved to Chicago's Art Institute, it contained only 300 works – testimony to the high number of sales Bridgman had made.

Decorative works, salon pictures, eastern subjects and drawings by Frederic A. Bridgman, a full-text auction catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries