Study of Ferns
Artist
Fidelia Bridges
(American, 1834 - 1923)
Date1864
MediumOil on board
Dimensions10 x 12 in. (15 7/8 x 19 x 3 1/4 in. framed)
ClassificationsOil Painting
Credit LineGift of Jean E. Taylor
Terms
Object number2009.32
Description"Study of Ferns" presents nature in a highly unusual way for a mid-nineteenth-century American woman painter. Bridges rejected traditional modes of nature studies associated with female artists, such as botanical illustrations or still lifes, and portrayed her subject-a cluster of ferns-among aging trees on a rugged hillside. She achieved the characteristic meticulous naturalism exemplified in "Study of Ferns" by painting directly and methodically from nature, often ten hours a day for days on end, not only just outside her studio but also in more remote areas. Her actions countered the beliefs of many contemporary male artists that women lacked the mental and physical stamina to sustain outdoor work.(2) The Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art, formed in New York in 1863, advocated the reform of American art through the rejection of outdated pictorial formulas and the adoption of the tenets of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. Bridges's teacher, Richards, was a founding member. Even before she met Richards in 1860, Bridges had probably read Ruskin's "Modern Painters" (1843-60) and seen English Pre-Raphaelite paintings at the 1857-58 "American Exhibition of British Art" in New York.(3) "Study of Ferns" reveals her core belief in Ruskin's ideas: nature rendered as accurately as possible because every particle of the natural world, no matter how seemingly insignificant, reveals God's creativity and thus deserves the artist's full attention.
The small size of the painting draws the viewer close for an intimate examination of nature's activities in a forest. No mere still life, it manifests decay and rebirth: the tender, growing bark of the silvery birch tree peels away, tree stumps and fallen limbs rot, and richly variegated brown leaves decompose into shadowed moist earth, providing sustenance for a stand of brilliantly lit green ferns gracefully swaying at the base of the birch. In "Study of Ferns", the infinite creativity of the divine is manifest in nature's regenerative powers.
SB and NN
NOTES:
2. Hill, "Fidelia Bridges", pp. 13, 15; and Jennifer Krieger, "Painting Her Way: The Remarkable Lives of Female Hudson River School Artists," in "Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School" (Catskill, N.Y.: Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 2010), p. 23.
3. Hill, "Fidelia Bridges", p. 9.
On View
On view
