Alfred Thompson Bricher (April 10, 1837 – September 30, 1908) was a painter associated with

White Mountain art White Mountain art is the body of work created during the 19th century by over four hundred artists who painted landscape scenes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire in order to promote the region and, consequently, sell their works of art. I ...

and the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...

Life and work

Bricher was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was educated in an academy at Newburyport, Massachusetts. He began his career as a businessman in Boston, Massachusetts. When not working, he studied at the

Lowell Institute The Lowell Institute is a United States educational foundation located in Boston, Massachusetts, providing both free public lectures, and also advanced lectures. It was endowed by a bequest of $250,000 left by John Lowell Jr., who died in 1836. ...

. He also studied with

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not ...

William Morris Hunt William Morris Hunt (March 31, 1824September 8, 1879) was an American painter. Born into the political Hunt family of Vermont, he trained in Paris with the realist Jean-François Millet and studied under him at the Barbizon artists’ colony, be ...

, and others. He attained noteworthy skill in making landscape studies from nature, and after 1858 devoted himself to the art as a profession. He opened a studio in Boston, and met with some success there. In 1868 he moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, and at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...

that year he exhibited “Mill-Stream at Newburyport.” Soon afterward he began to use

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to ...

s in preference to

oils An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

, and in 1873 was chosen a member of the

American Watercolor Society The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States. Qualifications AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...

. In the 1870s, he primarily did maritime themed paintings, with attention to watercolor paintings of landscape, marine, and coastwise scenery. He often spent summers in

Grand Manan Grand Manan is a Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy. Grand Manan is also the name of an incorporated village, which includes the main island and all of its adjacent islands, except White Head Island. It is governed as a village and is part of t ...

, where he produced such notable works as '' Morning at Grand Manan'' (1878). In 1879, Bricher was elected into the

as an Associate member.

Hudson River School

By the end of his life, the Hudson River School style of painting that included

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...

and luminism fell out of style, with Modern Art becoming the premier artistic movement. As his style of art faded, so did his fame.

Rediscovery

Over time Bricher's artwork gathered more attention and by the 1980s he began to be credited as one of the nineteenth century's greatest maritime painters. A self-taught luminist, he explored the effects of light and how it reflected, refracted, and absorbed on landscapes and seascapes.

Later life

As a lover of maritime life and the sea Bricher purchased a home in the 1890s close to the sea in the

New Dorp New Dorp is a neighborhood on the East Shore of Staten Island, New York City, United States. New Dorp is bounded by Mill Road on the southeast, Tysens Lane on the southwest, Amboy and Richmond Roads on the northwest, and Bancroft Avenue on the n ...

section of Staten Island, where he had views of

Lower New York Bay Lower New York Bay is a section of New York Bay south of the Narrows (the strait between Staten Island and Brooklyn). The eastern end of the Bay is marked by two spits of land, Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and Rockaway, Queens. The waterway b ...

, the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, and

Raritan Bay Raritan Bay is a bay located at the southern portion of Lower New York Bay between the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey and is part of the New York Bight. The bay is bounded on the northwest by New York's Staten Island, on the west by Per ...

. He lived and painted at the shore in New Dorp until his death there, aged 71.

References

External links

*
American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Bricher (see index)
Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bricher, Alfred Thompson 1837 births 1908 deaths 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters Painters from New Hampshire Hudson River School painters American landscape painters Luminism (American art style) American marine artists People from Portsmouth, New Hampshire People from New Dorp, Staten Island Painters from New York City National Academy of Design associates 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists