Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908) was an American landscape painter. He was the master of seascape painting. A. T. Bricher was a member of the White Mountain Art and the Hudson River School of art and painting.

Bricher spent a considerable time of his life traveling the coast of New England and Canada and the length of the Mississippi. He captured nature along the banks of rivers and the shores of the Atlantic ocean.

He was a self-taught painter. He paid attention to the meticulous details of his artwork. Bricher met painter William Stanely Haseltin during a sketching trip to Mt. Desert Island in 1858. He had an early influence on Bricher’s art.

Bricher’s early life

Bricher was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He completed his education in an academy in Newburyport Massachusetts and started his career as a businessman in Boston. He began studying art at Lowell Institute in his spare time. Famous painters such as Albert Bierstadt, and William Morris Hunt studied with him. He became a professional painter in 1858 after meeting Charles Temple Dix and William Stanley Haseltine.

Alfred Bricher gained a degree of command and skill in making landscapes after his study of nature. He devoted himself to the art and took it up as a profession in 1858. He achieved some success in this field after he opened his own studio in Boston.

Bricher moved to New York City in 1868 where he exhibited his painting ‘Mill-Stream at Newburyport’ at the National Academy of Design. He became a member of the American Watercolor Society. During the next few years in the 1870s, Bricher painted a lot of maritime themes.

He spent his time in the summers in Grand Manan where he produced his famous work ‘Morning at Grand Manan in 1878. He became an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design in 1879.

The Hudson River School becomes out of style

Towards the final few years of his life, the Hudson River School style of painting that included landscapes and luminism had become outdated and was beginning to lose its past glory with the Modern Art becoming the premier artistic movement. His art paid too much attention to detail to be an impressionist.

Luminism in Alfred Bricher’s painting

Luminism focuses on the effect of light in landscape painting. The American landscape artists developed this style of painting. They did this by hiding brush strokes in order to create varying effects of light and a level of translucency, especially over water. Such paintings depict calmness, serenity, and obscurity in the landscape.

Many famous American painters painted in this style in the mid-1800s. Well-known painters who adopted luminism in their paintings were also patrons of the Hudson River School of painting such as Church, Kensett, Yelland, Whittredge among others.

Effusion of light can be seen uniformly all over the painting in luminism. Dispersal of light is done via tonal modulations and not via brushstrokes.

One of his famous haunts was the white mountains. Here he is known to have painted many artworks in places like North Conway with other great artists such as Albert Bierstadt, William Morris Hunt, Gabriella Eddy, et al. He painted 20 artworks in one the year 1860-61 on popular subjects.

The beauty of the natural landscape rendered well to his luminous style of painting. He moved to New York later on in his career. He exhibited “Mill-Stream at Newburyport” at the National Gallery. Later joined the American Society of Painters in Water Colors in 1874 when he had moved to watercolors from oil paintings.

Bricher exhibited at the National academy from 1868 to 1890 and at Boston Athenaeum and the Brooklyn Art Association from 1870 to 1886. His works are on display in major museums of American Art.