Fidelia Bridges (1834 - 1923) American
Oil on Canvas
Measure 11 3/4"in H x 5 1/2"in W and 14"in H x 7 1/2"in W with frame
Known for: Bird and floral studies, holiday card designer
Biography: Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Fidelia Bridges became a specialist in detailed watercolor studies of plants and flowers and birds in their natural surroundings. This was a time when watercolor became increasingly respected. She was a follower of the Pre-Raphaelite* movement in art, the close-focus, detailed, small scale watercolor technique espoused by John Ruskin. She was also an illustrator, a part of her career that began in 1876 when she sold her first watercolors to publisher and chromolithographer* Louis Prang. For Prang, with whom she worked from 1881 to 1899, she designed greeting cards and illustrated calendars and books including in 1886, Familiar Birds and What Poets Sing of Them. Generally Fidelia had a quiet, independent life focused on the serenity of nature. Much of her early career was in New York City, but her primary residence was Salem, Massachusetts until 1892, when she moved to Canaan, Connecticut and lived there the remainder of her life. Bridges was also a good friend of sculptor, Anne Whitney, who strongly influenced Bridges to become an independent woman. In 1867, Whitney and Bridges went to Italy together, and then Bridges traveled alone, which gave her ongoing feelings of self reliance. As an older woman in Canaan, she was described as a "village personality . . . in a circle of literary and artistic maiden ladies, riding her bicycle to sketching excursions or to 'woodland picnics and afternoon teas" (Rubinstein 62). After she died on May 14, 1923, a small bird sanctuary was erected by the townspeople in her memory.