PLEIN AIR Heritage
Despite inauspicious beginnings as an orphan growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, Fidelia Bridges (1835–1923) became one of the few women artists of her time who could support herself with her work. While studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she befriended William Trost Richards and spent a summer with him and his family, working as a “mother’s helper” while continuing her outdoor study of the landscape. Her mentor’s lessons in PreRaphaelite theory convinced her that “each object in nature should be given its greatest precision of form and intensity of local color.” Of the detailed paintings of birds and flowers for which she became best known, one critic wrote, “She paints as if the year were all springtime.” Having enjoyed both commercial and critical success, she was elected to the…