She lived in Stratford, Connecticut by 1890 when she ministered to the ailing Lay who died that year. Paintings such as Daisies and Clover and Thrush in Wild Flowers are examples of her works during this period. She made some of her best paintings of the scenes from her summer visits from 1871 to 1888 with Oliver Ingraham Lay and his family. The birds found in the green salt grass lined banks of the Housatonic River were also of interest.
One of her favored sites was Stratford, Connecticut, where she enjoyed the wildflowers and other subject matter in the area's flats and meadows. įidelia Bridges, Irises Along the River, before 1923īridges was considered a specialist in her field and focused on the beauty and serenity of microscopic details in nature. Bridges "combined the temper of romanticism with the technique of a scientist," according to Frederick Sharf's biography of her. Her pictures, however, were not mere photographic reproductions of what she saw with the imagination of the true artist, she infused her subjects with a deep poetic meaning. In 1871, watercolor was a respected medium and she quickly gained popularity with her watercolor depictions of flowers and birds. Her works were then exhibited at the National Academy of Design. Bridges returned to the United States in the fall of 1868. She maintained her style of intricate botanical works in oil. Career and studies in Rome Īfter the American Civil War she studied for a year in Rome and lived and traveled with Adeline Manning and Anne Whitney. In 1865, Bridges left Philadelphia and established a studio on the top floor of the Browns' house in Brooklyn, where Anne Whitney also worked and lived with her companion Adeline Manning, a painter from Boston. She exhibited her works at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Through Richards, Bridges met museum curators and patrons of the arts, several of whom became collectors of her paintings. Richards said of her work that it was "the unaffected expression of a great joy in the beauty of nature- a joy which is after all the fountain of all that is finest in art and one could not see the rich treasures of Miss Bridge's portfolios of studies without feeling this." He was a Pre-Raphaelite advocate and her style was greatly influenced by him. Having remained friends with the Richards family, she accompanied them to Lake George and Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania and New Jersey on sketching trips. By 1862, she had her own studio in downtown Philadelphia. In 1860, after being inspired by her friend Anne Whitney, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia with William Trost Richards and became very close to his family. Early career and education īridges, however, soon abandoned teaching in order to concentrate on her drawing lessons. Eliza died in 1856 of tuberculosis, and Fidelia and her older sister Elizabeth then ran the school. The Bridges moved to Brooklyn, too, and in 1854 Eliza established a school there. After she regained her health, Fidelia became a live-in mother's helper in the household of William Augustus Brown, a Quaker who had been a Salem ship-holder before moving to Brooklyn, New York, where he became a successful wholesale produce merchant. She became a friend of the artist and art school owner Anne Whitney. įidelia took up drawing during her convalescence from an illness. Fidelia's older sister Eliza was a schoolteacher and became the guardian of her younger siblings.
They were living at 100 Essex Street, now known as the Fidelia Bridges Guest House, but moved to a more affordable home on the same street after their parents' death. The couple left four children, Eliza, Elizabeth, Fidelia, and Henry. Eliza died in March 1850, just three hours before the news of her husband's death arrived in Salem. In 1849, Henry Bridges fell ill and was taken to Portuguese Macau, where he died in December. She was orphaned at the age of fifteen when her mother and father died within months of each other.
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Fidelia Bridges, May one of a series of twelve color print illustrations, 1876, collection of the Boston Public Library.įidelia Bridges was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to Henry Gardiner Bridges (1789-1849), a sea captain, and Eliza (Chadwick) Bridges (1791-1850).
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