George Bridgman

George Brant Bridgman (1865–1943) was a Canadian-American painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New York for some 45 years.

George Bridgman
Born1865 (1865)
Province of Canada
Died1943 (aged 77–78)
New York City, New York, United States
NationalityCanadian American
EducationÉcole des Beaux-Arts
Known forPainting, art education, anatomy, figure drawing

Life and work

Bridgman was born in the United Province of Canada. In his youth, Bridgman studied the arts under painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and later with Gustave Boulanger. For most of his life Bridgman lived in the United States where he taught anatomy and figure drawing at the Art Students League of New York. Among his many thousands of students were the American cartoonist Will Eisner and Norman Rockwell; in his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator, Rockwell spoke highly of Bridgman. His successor at Art Students League was Robert Beverly Hale.

Bridgman used box forms to represent the major masses of the figure (head, thorax, and pelvis) which he would tie together with gestural lines and produce to create "wedges" or simplified interconnecting forms of the body.[1]

Notable students

Artists who studied with Bridgman include: McClelland Barclay, Emily Newton Barto, Norman Raeben, C. C. Beall, Gifford Beal, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Blake, Rosina Cox Boardman, Bessie Callender, Dane Chanase, Richard V. Culter, Chon Day, Helen Winslow Durkee, Will Eisner, Elias Goldberg, Robert Beverly Hale, Lorenzo Homar, Clark Hulings, Louis Paul Jonas, Jack Kamen, Deane Keller, Lee Krasner, Andrew Loomis, Anita Malfatti, Paul Manship, Frank McCarthy, John Cullen Murphy, Earl Moran, Kimon Nicolaïdes, Corrado Parducci, Frank J. Reilly, Ulysses Ricci, Norman Rockwell, Ernie Schroeder, Archie Boyd Teater, John Vassos, Franklin Brooke Voss, and Edmund Ward.

Jackson Pollock's sketchpad features work from Bridgman's books.

Works

Many of Bridgman's books standards on anatomy for artists, are still in print via Dover Publications.

  • Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life
  • Constructive Anatomy
  • The Human Machine
  • Bridgman's Life Drawing
  • Heads, Features and Faces
  • The Book of a Hundred Hands
Rescue of a Youth Fallen Overboard from a Fishing Boat, 1888, by George Bridgman

Honours
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References
  1. "George Brandt Bridgman at Askart.com"
  2. "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
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