Artist Birthday: Alfred Bricher

In the 1870s, Bricher concentrated almost entirely on marine views up and down the New England coastline. This view of an unnamed bay sums up the combination of influences on his landscape painting. He preserves the specificity of place so in demand by American patrons, with acute attention to natural detail, a hallmark of the Hudson River School. He was also focused on an accurate depiction of nuances in light and atmosphere—a Luminist concern—based on direct observation and sketches, finished in the studio. The reduction of the background to misty, indistinct forms contrasts sharply with the meticulously painted shoreline. It creates an almost abstract contrast of positive and negative shapes. Most of his marine scenes like this are rendered in an incredibly calm, almost vacuum like stillness.

Artist birthday for 1 April: Alfred Bricher (1837-1908, United States)

The paintings of Alfred Bricher can be variously classified as Hudson River School, White Mountain School, or, in the case of this painting, leaning toward Luminism.

Alfred Bricher (1837-1908, United States), Rocky Shore. Watercolor on paper, 26.7 x 38.1 cm. Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH. (BIAA-301)

An American school of landscape painting began to crystallize during the second decade of the 1800s. The excitement over the birth of their new country left Americans hungry for art that was truly "American," but also art that reflected the natural beauty of the American landscape.  Groups of artists with interest in similar types of landscape painting formed all over the country, particularly in the northeast, where the most renowned was the so-called Hudson River School, which painted scenes of the Hudson River Valley, Adirondack mountains, and scenic spots around New England.

Bricher, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts. As a youth, he was largely self-taught in painting, taking occasional classes at the Lowell Institute and an art academy in Newburyport. From 1851 until 1858 he was a successful businessman in Boston, until he met the landscape painter William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900), an artist associated with the Hudson River School, Luminism, and the Rocky Mountain School. They met while sketching at Mount Desert, Maine, and thereafter Bricher resolved to be a professional artist.

During the 1860s, Bricher had a studio in Newburyport, making frequent painting trips to the Hudson River Valley, the White Mountains, and up and down the northeast seacoast. In North Conway, New Hampshire, he met and painted with Hudson River School artist Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902). During the 1860s he produced a prolific number of landscape paintings, establishing a solid reputation, and hired by L. Prang lithographer in Boston to provide landscapes for their low-cost prints.