Charles Bridges (painter)

[1] Bridges was a member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, having worked for the organization in London from 1699 to 1713 and serving for a time as a liaison to local charity schools.

Only one portrait is firmly documented dating to before his sojourn in Virginia; it depicts Thomas Baker, a fellow of Saint John's College, University of Cambridge, and was painted sometime after 1717.

[5] Byrd wrote on his behalf to Alexander Spotswood, describing him as "a man of a good family," who was forced "either by the frowns of fortune, or his own mismanagement," to work as a painter;[1] the planter further commented that Bridges, though he might "have not the Masterly Hand of a Lilly, or a Kneller, yet had he lived so long ago as when places were given to the most Deserving, he might have pretended to be the Sergeant-Painter of Virginia.

"[2] With Blair and Edmund Gibson (who with Thomas Gooch had provided one of his letters of introduction to the colony), Bridges discussed the possibility of establishing a charity to teach Christianity to Virginia's African-American community.

Bridges did not sign his work, and other documentation is lacking; this, coupled with the uneven condition of surviving paintings, precludes certain identification of many pieces.

[7] Paintings attributed to Bridges may also be found in the collections of Washington and Lee University, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and the Virginia Historical Society.

[1] A painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, formerly attributed to him and said to have been a portrait of Maria Taylor Byrd,[8] has since been reassigned to the "school of Sir Godfrey Kneller".