Letters
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Lay, Oliver Ingraham, 1845-1890
label: Collection Creator
content: Lay, Charles Downing, 1877-1956
setName: label: See more items in
content: Oliver Ingraham Lay, Charles Downing Lay, and Lay Family papers
label: See more items in
content: Oliver Ingraham Lay, Charles Downing Lay, and Lay Family papers / Series 3: Fidelia Bridges Papers
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1857-2000
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.layoliv, Subseries 3.1
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by family members' surname, and then filed chronologically.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: 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.