Fidelia Bridges discovered her artistic talent at the young age of sixteen. She was orphaned in that year and went to convalesce in the county at the home of some relatives. There she started sketching and recognized that she had innate talent.

As an orphan from a large family with little to no means, Bridges knew early on that she would need to work. So when she returned from her period of recuperation, she began taking art lessons with the hope that she would be become an art teacher, as women in her financial circumstances did. Little did she know that she would become a successful artist in her own right.

Bridges was one of the rare women of the nineteenth century to transform what was considered an acceptable "hobby" into a respectable and profitable career. The time in which she developed as an artist was conducive to the signature style and subject matter that comprised her life’s work.

Bridges was a close observer of nature. She took the native flora, birds, and butterflies around her native Massachusetts as her subject matter and created delicate and graceful compositions. Katherine Manthorne in Fidelia Bridges: Nature into Art called her work "living still lifes." She directed her viewers’ attention to modest scenes with intense focus, but did not get mired in the details. Instead her paintings are the perfect combination of natural abundance and restrained composition.

The opening of Japan in 1853 created strong interest in Asian art in the United States. Bridges’s own fascination and admiration of Japanese art and design deeply influenced her artistic style. The asymmetry of her compositions, restrained palette, and tremendous technical dexterity all speak to Bridges’s study of the aesthetic.

Bridges was like no other artist of her era. In 1875 Henry James compared her work to Winslow Homers in the American Watercolor Society exhibition and stated that her paintings were “infinitely finer and intellectual” than Homer’s. After the Civil War the American public wanted art that conveyed beauty and joy, and Bridges’s work provided that without cloying sentimentality. She also excelled in the watercolor medium, which had gained considerable cachet. By the mid-1870s, she could not keep up with the demand for her paintings from upper-class patrons, of which Mark Twain was one.

Bridges’s work caught the eye of Louis Prang, who had brought chromolithography to the United States from Europe. Prang saw great potential in Bridges’s work and in 1875 commissioned her to paint twelve birds of New England which he transformed into a printed calendar. It was a huge success. Prang also introduced Christmas cards to the American public and Bridges’s designs were the most popular. In 1880 he hired Bridges as a permanent designer. She was one of the few artists who Prang permitted to sign her work.

Bridges used chromolithography to sell her work, but she also used it to promote conservation. Bird feathers were a hugely popular fashion accessory in 1880s and 1890s. By 1886 it was estimated that around 5 million birds had been killed to create plumed hats and the like. Bridges was outraged and created a series of plates that celebrated the majesty of birds through poetry and art. This work and her paintings in general contributed to the newfound appreciation and protection of birds and to the emergence of bird watching as a hobby.

Bridges’s career spanned 50 years. She worked ten hours a day. She never married or had children, as she knew the demands of a domestic life would seriously curtail or completely end her ability to work. She led a solitary life, devoted to her work and the natural world she loved. Her success came with sacrifice, as she often told her friends that she felt lonely. She painted well into her 80s, until she could no longer hold a brush, and died at 88. William Trost Richards, her teacher and mentor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts said of her: “With her [Bridges], art is no end in itself. It is a medium for soul expression. In all her work, one hears distinctly the voice of nature speaking in the idiom of art.”