page_title: Frederick Lee Bridell
section_title: Italian Period
hierarchical_section_title: Frederick Lee Bridell / Italian Period
caption_attribution_description: English: The bust of the painter Frederick Lee Bridell on display in Tudor House, Southampton. Created by the sculptor Richard Cockle Lucas in the nineteenth century.
context_page_description: Frederick Lee Bridell was a popular painter of 19th century Britain, initially as a Portrait artist, gaining favour with luminaries such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning who entertained Bridell and his wife, for their wedding meal at Bocca di Leone, Rome in 1859.
  His early professional career was as an apprentice to a picture dealer who had him copying pictures by Old Masters although he also funded his education abroad.
context_section_description: Freed from financial constraint, Bridell was able to travel to Italy in the autumn of 1858. He set up a studio in Rome, near the Spanish Steps, in December of that year. There are  entertaining descriptions of life in the city at this time, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both he and his wife were interested in the culture and art  and wrote details of their visits in French and Italian Notebooks. In Rome in 1859, Bridell met and married Eliza Fox, an artist, and the daughter of an MP, William Johnson Fox.  She was known to influential writers and thinkers of the time, and  Robert Browning, ‘gave her away’ at the ceremony. The newly wedded couple had their ‘wedding dinner’ at the Browning’s apartment in  Bocca di Leone. Two days later they were both painting at their respective studios.
  Bridell, freed from the deprivation of his early years, embarked on his most prolific period. In Italy, he completed  monumental works inspired by the landscape near Rome. It was however, in the vicinity of the Italian Lakes that he was most inspired to paint. Driven by his all consuming desire to record the grand vistas before him, he ignored the illness that was taking hold of his body. Returning to England in 1863, he died in Kensington in August of that year and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. He was outlived by both parents and a sister.
  The following year, possibly for financial reasons, Wolff sent his Bridell Gallery to Christie’s. The sale on 27/2/1864  included the following which were never to be seen together again.
  The Temple of Venus,
  The Coliseum at Rome by Moonlight (Southampton Art Gallery),
  Lake Constance,
  The Temple of Vesta,
  Ave Maria at Bolzano (private coll.)
  The Fortress Ehrenbreitstein,
  Grand Sunrise from Stonehenge,
  Etruscan Tombs at Civita Castellana (74 x 47ins)
  The Villa D’Este (74 x 47 ins)
  Under the Pine Trees
  Castel Fusano (49 x 72ins)
  Grotto of Neptune (49 x72ins)
  Writing Bridell’s obituary, Sir Theodore Martin stated 
  ‘Had he lived,he must have earned a European reputation; and numerous and fine as are the works he has left, his early death is, in the interests of Art, deeply to be deplored. We have only to add, that in manners Mr.Bridell was simple, amiable and modest. Firm without self-assertion, sincere without being obtrusive, we can believe he was beloved by his friends, as most certainly he was respected by those whose knowledge of him was comparatively slight’.
caption: Bust of Bridell on display in the Tudor House, Southampton
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