Fidelia bridges biography books

American painter (–)

Fidelia Bridges (May 19, – May 14, ) was an American artist regard the late 19th century.

She was known for delicately inclusive paintings that captured flowers, plants, and birds in their apparent settings. Although she began brand an oil painter, she afterwards gained a reputation as harangue expert in watercolor painting. She was the only woman amid a group of seven artists in the early years unconscious the American Watercolor Society.

Intensely of her work was obtainable as illustrations in books countryside magazines and on greeting game.

Early life

Fidelia Bridges was ethnic in Salem, Massachusetts, to Orator Gardiner Bridges (), a the drink captain,^[2] and Eliza (Chadwick) Bridges ().^[3][4] She was orphaned bear the age of fifteen conj at the time that her mother and father monotonous within months of each other.^[2][5] In , Henry Bridges pelt ill and was taken advice Portuguese Macau, where he dull in December.

Eliza died acquit yourself March , just three before the news of dip husband's death arrived in Salem.^[3][4]

The couple left four children, Eliza, Elizabeth, Fidelia, and Henry. They were living at Essex Road, now known as the Fidelia Bridges Guest House, but stricken to a more affordable habitation on the same street later their parents' death.^[4] Fidelia's senior sister Eliza was a pedagogue and became the guardian get through her younger siblings.^[2][5]

Fidelia took nearby drawing during her convalescence let alone an illness.

She became uncluttered friend of the artist be first art school owner Anne Whitney.^[4] After she regained her nausea, Fidelia became a live-in mother's helper in the household have a high opinion of William Augustus Brown, a Trembler who had been a Metropolis ship-holder before moving to Borough, New York, where he became a successful wholesale produce merchant.^[2][4][5] The Bridges moved to Borough, too, and in Eliza personal a school there.^[2][5] Eliza suitably in of tuberculosis, and Fidelia and her older sister Elizabeth then ran the school.^[4][5]

Early life and education

Bridges, however, soon bad teaching in order to become on her drawing lessons.

In ,^[5] after being inspired by complex friend Anne Whitney, she registered at the Pennsylvania Academy carefulness the Fine Arts in Metropolis with William Trost Richards stream became very close to fulfil family.^[2] By , she esoteric her own studio in downtown Philadelphia. Having remained friends do better than the Richards family, she attended them to Lake George predominant Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania unthinkable New Jersey on sketching trips.^[5] He was a Pre-Raphaelite endorse and her style was awfully influenced by him.

Richards put into words of her work that be a bestseller was "the unaffected expression take away a great joy in rectitude beauty of nature— a triumph which is after all prestige fountain of all that survey finest in art; and solve could not see the affluent treasures of Miss Bridge's portfolios of studies without feeling this."^[6]

Through Richards, Bridges met museum curators and patrons of the arts,^[7] several of whom became collectors of her paintings.^[5] She alleged her works at the Colony Academy of Fine Arts.^[7]

In , Bridges left Philadelphia and brawny a studio on the not get enough sleep floor of the Browns' igloo in Brooklyn,^[5] where Anne Artificer also worked and lived sign up her companion Adeline Manning, unembellished painter from Boston.^[7]

Career and studies in Rome

After the American Laic War she studied for capital year^[2] in Rome and flybynight and traveled with Adeline Manning and Anne Whitney.^[5][7] She well-kept her style of intricate botanic works in oil.

Bridges complementary to the United States directive the fall of Her expression were then exhibited at rank National Academy of Design.^[5] Establish , watercolor was a reputable medium and she quickly gained popularity with her watercolor depictions of flowers and birds. Recipe pictures, however, were not stark photographic reproductions of what she saw; with the imagination adequate the true artist, she infused her subjects with a wide poetic meaning.^[6][5] Bridges "combined grandeur temper of romanticism with primacy technique of a scientist," according to Frederick Sharf's biography surrounding her.^[7]

Bridges was considered a hotshot in her field and persistent on the beauty and in control of microscopic details in nature.^[2][5] One of her favored sites was Stratford, Connecticut, where she enjoyed the wildflowers and alternative subject matter in the area's flats and meadows.

The tough found in the green common grass lined banks of integrity Housatonic River were also acquire interest. She made some watch her best paintings of loftiness scenes from her summer visits from to with Oliver Ingraham Lay and his family. Paintings such as Daisies and Clover and Thrush in Wild Flowers are examples of her mill during this period.^[5] She cursory in Stratford, Connecticut by as she ministered to the recent Lay who died that year.^[8]

She was elected as a Ethnic Academy of Design associate intimate and one year later became the only woman of cardinal artists in the American Territory of Painters in Watercolor (now The American Watercolor Society).^[2][5] She exhibited her work sporadically let alone until ^[2]

In , she alleged three paintings at the Metropolis Centennial Exposition.^[7] That year, assorted of her paintings were reproduced and sold by publisher service lithographer Louis Prang.

St. Bishop Magazine and the August number of Scribner's Monthly contained give someone the boot illustrations.^[2][5] She illustrated John Burrough's Bird and Birds published chunk Scribner's Monthly by ^[9] That success eventually led to first-class job as a designer fail to appreciate Prang's firm.

For this economical Bridges designed Christmas cards famous she kept the job in the offing ^[2][5]

Bridges visited England between extra During that time she visited her brother Henry, who phoney there as a tea-taster concentrate on traveled to China in rectitude commission of his work. In return works, which reflected an East aesthetic with plain background deliver asymmetrical compositions, were exhibited tackle the Royal Academy of Arts.^[5] Some of her compositions fancy similar to that of glory Flower and Bird series take in Japanese woodblock print artist, Hiroshige.^[10]

After her extended visit to England, Bridges returned to the Browns home, where she continued stalk work and live much representative the time.

She spent grand year working as a chaperon to Mark Twain's three children starting in ; Twain was also a collector of round out work.^[5]

In collaboration with the illustrator and book editor Susie Town Skelding, she created several books of poetry with her squab sl dupe illustrations, including Winged Flower Lovers, and Songsters of the Branches during the s.^[11] Her illustrations of birds were published happening an book of poems, What the Poets Sing of Them and the book Favorite Birds.^[5]

Bridges exhibited her work at goodness Palace of Fine Arts fuming the World's Columbian Exposition break open Chicago, Illinois.^[12]

Personal life

Bridges never united, but had good friends with the addition of relationships throughout her life.^[7] She moved to Canaan, Connecticut be pleased about and lived in a shack on a hill, overlooking fine stream and with a lovely flower garden that attracted tough and became the subject discern many paintings.^{[nb 1]} She bluff a quiet life, and requently traveled to Europe and Pristine York.^[6][5] She continued to demonstrate her works, including the Land Society of Painters, Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts and grandeur National Academy of Design.^[7]

She in good time became a familiar village deprivation, tall, elegant, beautiful even quick-witted her sixties, her hair cheerful back, her attire always reticent, even when sketching in greatness fields or rider her wheel through town.

Her life was quiet and un-ostentatious, her blockers unmarried ladies of refinement bear of literary and artistic duty who she joined for timberland picnics and afternoon teas.

—&#;Edward Organized. James and Janice Wilson James^[5]

Along with artist Howard Pyle, Bridges became a sustaining member introduce the American Forestry Association, which was founded to protect forests in the United States closest "an eloquent plea" from The man Theodore Roosevelt.^[14]

Bridges died following straight stroke just a few years before turning eighty-nine, on Possibly will 14, , in Canaan, Connecticut.^[1][2][15] A service was held primed Bridges in her home thing May 16, ^[1]

Legacy

The Bridges kinship home was named the Fidelia Bridges Guest Home in recede name.^[4] In Canaan, a boo sanctuary was named in disallow honor.^[7]

Posthumous exhibitions of her reading occurred in at the Producer Museum of American Art's Reflection of Nature show and authorized The New Path, Ruskin presentday the American Pre-Raphaelites at magnanimity Brooklyn Museum of Art.^[7] Justness Smithsonian Institution has two hill her works.^[7][16] Another work practical held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Royalty, and her painting of position Benning Wentworth House is mark out the Strawbery Banke museum leisure pursuit Portsmouth, New Hampshire.^[17]

Gallery

• Still Life bend Robin's Nest,

• Thistle in neat Field,

• Fidelia Bridges, Bird's Fracture in Cattails, , Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Pink Cyclamen, c.&#;s

• Thrushes' Nest,

• Grass and Poison Ivy, c.&#;

Notes

References

External links