Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908)

The following essay is from the 1982 publication Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern.

Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Alfred Thompson Bricher worked as a youth in Boston and may have studied art at the Lowell Institute, but when he decided to become a professional painter in 1858 he was essentially self-taught. He established a studio in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and one in Boston in 1859, devoting himself to Hudson River and New England landscapes in a style of plein air naturalism. In 1868 he moved to New York where he joined the American Society of Painters in Water Colors with whom he exhibited regularly as well as at the National Academy of Design and the Brooklyn Art Association. Coastal scenes began to play an increasingly prominent role in his works, under the influence especially of Lane and Kensett, and he took frequent sketching trips to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the offshore islands of Maine, and the shorelines of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Long Island, and New Jersey. Bricher was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1879 and in 1882 built a small studio at Southampton, Long Island, where he could study the effects of natural light. A prolific artist, his work is uneven but at its best occupies an upper rank in the Luminist movement.

Steven A. Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern, September 26- November 14, 1982, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts), 59.

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