Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Winters in Algeria, New York, 1890, p. 202, illustrated

New York, American Art Gallery, Exhibition of Pictures and Studies by F. A. Bridgman, 1881, no. 231 (as A Biskra Barber) 

Frederick Arthur Bridgman recorded his North African travels and illustrated the present work in his book Winters in Algeria, published in 1890. In 1879, Bridgman left for Batna and Biskra from Constantine, with a new travelling companion and a loaded 'dust-in-crusted conveyance'. They first stopped at Batna and by the time they arrived in Biskra, they were quite weary and Bridgman underwhelmed ‘Biskra, although a collection of several distant villages – as the name signifies – all belonging to the one oasis interspersed and surrounded by its hundred thousand date-palms, appeared insignificant in the great expanse’. However, Bridgman's viewpoint shifted and his ever-present enthusiasm surfaced after exploring the town ‘the perfect stillness of the bright moonlight night and balmy temperature could not have been surpassed on a stroll in Paradise’.

Bridgman was enthralled by North Africa and he was inspired to paint scenes of domestic life, of life on the street (such as the present work), portraits of people he encountered and the harsh expansive desert. He also liked depicting animals, in particular horses, seen here and in his later work Village in the Sahara (lot 44).