Bridgman was born in 1864 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 (from 1898 until 1900, and then 1903 until October 1943). His successor at Art Students League was
Robert Beverly Hale. Bridgman had also taught classes at the
Grand Central School of Art and at the
American Bank Note Company. 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. He had been a member of the
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. ==Notable students==