Frederick Lee Bridell was baptised on 5 December 1830. He was the third child and only son of John Bridell, carpenter, and Amelia (formerly Bartlett), living in Houndwell, Southampton. He received basic schooling and left at an early age to earn a living. From his friend Henry Rose, we learn that Bridell was drawing avidly and ‘writing verse’ from the age of nine. In his early artistic career, he was apprenticed to the picture dealer Edwin Holder, for whom he copied Old Master paintings. Holder would later fund his education abroad. By the age of 18, Bridell had taken up portrait painting and was signing his work, Frederick Lee Bridell. One of the earliest portraits (Southampton Art Gallery) was of Henry Rose and was shown to Holder who recognised his talent. Bridell then took up residence with Holder’s family near Bray in Berkshire. Two years later, he went to the Continent. After a short period in Paris, where he copied works in the Louvre, he established himself in Munich. There, he copied works by Cuyp, Van der Velde and Berchem. He was inspired by the mountainous landscape of the Tyrol and its wooded valleys. Returning to England in 1855, he worked up his sketches from his travels into paintings and completed numerous commissions for the well-to-do of Southampton. He exhibited at the RA, the British Institution and the Liverpool Academy. Within two years, he acquired a patron, James Wolff, a shipping magnate. He established a gallery of Bridell’s paintings at his home at Bevois Mount and allowed visitors to view the paintings. The essence of Bridell’s work was the depiction of vastness in nature, large areas of landscape within which light moves through the scene, highlighting form and shadow. In his subjects, Bridell was much influenced by Turner, but remained true to his own style. He hoped that his painting The Temple of Venus would one day hang between the Turners and Claudes in the National Gallery. However, the present location of the work is unknown, it last appearing at auction in 1913. 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 vista of the Italian Lakes, he ignored illness. Returning to England, he expired on 20 August 1863 in Kensington 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 paintings by Bridell to auction at Christie’s. Sir Theodore Martin composed Bridell’s obituary, it 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. Born in Southampton in 1830, he died at 33 in London in 1863.  In a short working life of 15 years, he travelled widely in Europe, including Italy, and developed a distinctive style of landscape painting which won wide acclaim from contemporaries, among them Sir Charles Eastlake and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ The main body of Bridell’s publicly held works are in the collection of Southampton Art Gallery. In 2007, after much research, C Aitchison Hull produced her book Frederick Lee Bridell: 1830-63 which was published by Matador Books.