Oliver Ingraham Lay, Charles Downing Lay, and Lay family papers, 1789-2000, bulk circa 1870s-1996

This subseries includes Fidelia Bridges' letters to Phebe Crowell Brown, Annie Brown, and other Brown family members, Oliver Ingraham Lay, and Charles and Laura Lay. Topics include painting activities, personal observations, visits with mutual friends and family, travels, and residences.

Letters contain references to Bridges' colleagues and friends, including William Trost Richards and his daughter, Anna Richards Brewster, John Sartain, the Shannon family, and Hannah Smith. Letters document the period Bridges studied painting with William Trost Richards in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 1860s and her stay in England when she exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1879 to 1880. Also found are the artist's reflections during her travels to England, Germany, and Switzerland, as well as to Paris and Venice in the late 1860s-1890s; many letters are interspersed with Bridges' detailed descriptions of the landscape. Found is one illustrated letter from Fidelia Bridges to Annie Brown (undated). Files also contain typescripts of transcriptions of Bridges' letters and the letters exchanged between Brown family members.

This subseries also contains the scattered correspondence files of Henry Bridges (Fidelia's brother), Charles Downing Lay, George C. Lay, (Charles's son), and various Lay family members. Also found as attachments with other letters are business records, notes, miscellaneous printed material, and photographs. Letters from William T. Brewster to Charles Downing Lay discuss Bridges's relationship with the Richards family and the work of his wife, the painter Anna Richards Brewster. George C. Lay's correspondence with art historians, gallery dealers, and others provides biographical material on Bridges, as well as provenance-related information on several works by the artist.

This subseries contains George C. Lay's files relating to retrospective exhibitions that featured Fidelia Bridges's work; included are correspondence, loan agreements, a certificate of insurance, a facility report, various receipts, exhibition catalogues, printed material, photographs, and one slide. Exhibitions included the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Katonah Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, as well as at Anderson Fine Arts, Inc. (New York), the Connecticut Gallery and other venues.

This subseries contains index cards and a list of the curio collection bequeathed to Charles Downing Lay by Henry Bridges, a copy of a biographical account of Fidelia Bridges by Frederic A. Sharf, George C. Lay's handwritten notes relating to Fidelia Bridges, and a copy of a play written by Fidelia Bridges.

This subseries houses one pen and ink drawing by Anna Richards inscribed to Oliver Ingraham Lay, one watercolor portrait of Fidelia Bridges, and a watercolor sketch of a seascape.

This subseries includes Bridges' chromolithographs of her illustrated greeting cards, reproductions of artwork, exhibition invitations, announcements, exhibition catalogs, brochures, clippings, an offprint, and copies of photographs of artwork by Bridges. Several of the greeting cards are inscribed. Most clippings are reviews of the exhibitions. Also found are two published books illustrated by Fidelia Bridges, A Garland of Love, 1882 and Songs of Birds, 1886.

The subseries contains images of Fidelia Bridges, family and friends and residences, in addition to images of artwork, including installation shots, negatives, slides, and transparencies.

There are images of Bridges as a young woman with a group of women colleagues, Bridges with William F. Brown, and William Trost Richards, respectively, as well as a portrait image of Anne Whitney. Also found is one cyanotype of Bridges and one cyanotype of Oliver Ingraham Lay. Included are exterior and interior views of Fidelia Bridges' home in Canaan, Connecticut and of the Shannon residence in Newton, Massachusetts. Several photographs are inscribed from Mary Shannon to Oliver Ingraham Lay. Files also contain nature studies by Bridges.