Alfred Thompson Bricher Paintings

A romantic and moving work by on of America's top Coastal painters of the 19th century! A large-scale and impressive work with lovely light. This painting can hold a large spot. It is in a classic 19th century marine style frame, 22 Karat gold. The size of the canvas inside the frame is 30.25 x 50.25. Bricher sketched and painted along the New England coast, depicting long stretches of shore under varying skies of Massachusetts and Maine. Under a Divided Sky is a departure from his often calm or fair views. Bricher focused upon an old wreck that is a moving and poetic reminder of man’s vulnerability in relation to the vicissitudes of the sea. To heighten this feeling, Bricher has imparted a contrast to the sky. It is either a clearing as a storm departs, which would be a metaphor for hope or the storm is impending, which parallels the tragedy at hand. Bricher was a second-generation Hudson River painter but as his career progressed he became engrossed with depictions of the coast as opposed to the landscapes he often did in the 1860’s and early 1870’s. The artists that had the greatest influence on him were Martin Johnson Heade, Fitz Hugh Lane...

A fine coastal seascape of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, by American artist Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908). Bricher was a significant member of the second generation of Hudson River School landscape painters and was considered to be one of the last of the relevant American Luminists. Unlike his contemporaries who sketched and painted notable mountainous spots like the Adirondacks, the Catskills, the White Mountains, Lake George, and Lake Champlain, Bricher devoted his attention instead to painting the seashore and ocean. He painted views of Shinnecock, Narragansett, Chatham, Cape Cod, Southampton and of other various places along the Massachusetts and Maine coastlines. As a result, he is best known for his marine paintings, such as the present work, that depict New England shorelines and showcase the dynamic forces of the sea. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and became a businessman in Boston who, in his leisure hours, studied at the Lowell Institute in Boston and attended an academy in Newburyport, Massachusetts. By 1858 he became a professional artist and in the 1860s, he ­followed his contemporaries to the popular vistas of the White Mountains. There, particularly at North Conway, he studied and painted with Albert Bierstadt, William Morris Hunt, Gabriella Eddy, and Benjamin Champney. His paintings were exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Art Club, the National Academy of Design, the Brooklyn Art Association, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Oil on canvas, signed lower left, titled “Rocky Coast...