Fidelia Bridges

Fidelia Bridges was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Orphaned by age fifteen, she moved in 1854 to Brooklyn, where she worked as a governess. She went to Philadelphia in 1860 to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and spent the summers of 1860 and 1861 studying painting with the landscapist William Trost Richards, who espoused the philosophies of John Ruskin and the British Pre-Raphaelites. Bridges's extremely detailed renderings of humble subjects found in nature were no doubt inspired by Richards's advocacy of direct and meticulous examination of the natural world. Bridges set up a studio in Philadelphia and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1862. The following year she showed work at the Brooklyn Art Association and the National Academy of Design in New York.

Bridges traveled to Europe in 1867 for additional study, spending several months in France and Switzerland before joining two other American women, the sculptor Anne Whitney and the painter Adeline Manning, in Rome. On her return to Brooklyn in 1868, she rented a studio on Broadway in Manhattan. In 1873 she was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design, exhibiting there from 1869 to 1908. Throughout her career, Bridges concentrated on close studies of birds, flowers, and other plants, her frequent trips to the Catskills, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New Hampshire providing her with a necessary "draught of fresh inspiration from nature."(1) She worked mostly in oil in the 1860s, gradually shifting to watercolor by the 1870s. She exhibited with the American Society of Painters in Water Colors from 1871 to 1912 and was elected a member in 1875.

Bridges's association with Louis Prang and Company began in 1875, when Prang purchased a series of her paintings to use as calendar illustrations. From 1881 to 1899 she was one of the publishing firm's designers of cards, calendars, and gift books. Aided by the additional income from her commercial work, Bridges moved to Canaan, Connecticut, in 1890, where she resided until her death.

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NOTES:

1. Quoted in May Brawley Hill, "Fidelia Bridges: American Pre-Raphaelite" (New Britain: New Britain Museum of American Art, 1981), p. 17.