TitleFidelia Bridge's Garden in Canaan, Connecticut
Artist
William Trost Richards
(American, 1833 - 1905)
Date1901
MediumWatercolor and gouache on cream wove paper
DimensionsSheet size: 5 3/8 × 8 5/16 in.
Mat size: 12 1/2 × 15 1/2 in.
SignedSigned in black ink at BLC: "Wm T. Richards. 1901."
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of Mrs. William T. Brewster, daughter of the artist, 1952
Object number1980.44
Label TextRichards appears to have only taken on students in the early 1860s. Fidelia Bridges became his pupil at that time, and the two remained lifelong friends. Richards set Bridges up in a studio in Philadelphia in 1862, and introduced her to various collectors. She went on to a successful career as a watercolorist and painter of flowers growing in a natural setting. In 1901, Richards visited her home in Canaan, Connecticut, and pictured the surrounding landscape as well as her rustic waterside garden – an homage perhaps to his former student’s artistic interest, as well as a recollection of his own fascination in the 1860s with flowers growing by wayside roads.
