Birds in a Marsh Landscape

Fidelia Bridges is among the few women to achieve a successful career as a professional artist in mid-19th century America. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1834, Bridges discovered a talent for drawing while recuperating from childhood illness and, after working as a governess in Brooklyn to support herself, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under William Trost Richards. Richards not only instilled in her a devotion to truthfully representing nature, but he also helped Bridges set up her own Philadelphia studio in 1862. She began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in 1863, and a decade later in 1873, she was one of only two women to be elected as an associate member of the Academy. The following year, she also became the fifth female member of the American Watercolor Society. Beginning in 1876, several of her works were reproduced as lithographs by Louis Prang.

Bridges became known for her meticulous watercolors and paintings of flora and fauna, creating what Katherine Manthorne describes as "living still lifes." Her subjects were based on her constant sketching outdoors, often in the Connecticut countryside, where she spent summers and later settled. Her work is represented in public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the latter of which holds examples gifted by Max N. Berry.