Charles J. Bridgman (1841-1895) American, Exceptional Oil on Canvas "Battledore & Shuttlecock (1873)". 

Among Charles Bridgman’s known works, the offered painting stands out as one of his finest. The figures’ costumes suggest a Brittany cottage, richly detailed with the accoutrements typical of a mid‑19th-century studio. At the center, a mother and child play Battledore and Shuttlecock, an early form of modern badminton. The studio is densely populated with carefully arranged props that take on a still-life quality, reflecting the artist’s personality and meticulous eye. In the lower left, a copy of Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau’s Three Fantasies for Flute Solo lies on the floor, partially hidden behind a flute propped against the easel—Bridgman himself was reportedly an amateur flautist. The easel holds a sweeping dusk landscape and is adorned with embroidered fabric, silk ribbons, and fresh flowers. On the upper-left wall, an evergreen branch hangs above a religious print of the Virgin and Child. To the right, two portraits of Brittany-costumed girls hang alongside a small depiction of a thatched-roof village, complete with a flower garland. The walls also feature a plaster cast of a face and a bird’s nest. Chairs in both the foreground and right corner are draped with textiles, with the foreground chair further decorated by a Venetian-style Mardi Gras mask. In the lower right, near a feathered shuttlecock, sits an artist’s palette loaded with fresh paint. Suspended at the upper margin, a large mercury-reflective bulb hangs from a blue silk ribbon, capturing a mirrored view of the opposite studio wall, including a window and a gallery of paintings.

Signed lower right. Signed and titled verso.

Overall Size: 30 1/4 x 26 1/4 in.
Sight Size: 21 1/2 x 17 1/2 in .

Charles J. Bridgman (1841–1895) was an American painter active in the mid-to-late 19th century, known for his figure and genre scenes, as well as occasional landscapes and marine subjects. Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, he was part of a family connected to the arts — his brother was the more famous orientalist painter Frederick Arthur Bridgman. Charles spent part of his career working in France as well as in New Orleans, Louisiana, reflecting transatlantic influences in his work. His drawings and paintings occasionally surfaced among collections — for example, the national collections in the United States include some of his works — but he never achieved the notoriety of his brother. Bridgman’s output remains relatively obscure today; what survives suggests an artist comfortable with narrative tableau and traditional academic techniques, working in a period rich with genre painting and shifting artistic tastes.

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