A Quiet Day near Manchester

1873

Alfred Thompson Bricher

Painter, American, 1837 - 1908

Alfred Thompson Bricher

Attributed to

Slightly below us and at a distance, water gently laps at sandy beach that curves alongside massive, craggy outcroppings in this panoramic horizontal landscape painting. Scrubby grass and low-slung trees dot an area of gray rocks in the lower left corner of the painting. A vivid yellow and black insect lands on a nearly horizontal tree trunk close to us, and two women sit and stand on the rocks farther out. One wears a red shirt and holds a narrow yellow parasol, and the other wears a lilac-purple, full-skirted dress and a yellow cap. The outcroppings rise vertically just beyond the women. Dark green plants grow along a ridge to the left. The remains of logs or beams and perhaps cloth is near the breaking surf of the beach, at the bottom center of the painting. The beach curves in a C-shape and then turns back to create a point just beyond the outcroppings. The white sails of a few boats sit on the slate-blue water, which reaches back to the hazy horizon, which is about halfway up the composition. A few spots of bright white or gray clouds dot the otherwise washed out, ivory-white sky above. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “A.T. Bricher 1873.”

Media Options

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Alfred Thompson Bricher began his career as a painter of autumnal landscapes, but by the late 1860s he had become a specialist in seascapes. His favorite subjects were the beaches and headlands of the New England coast, and he excelled at depicting such scenes in calm weather and lit by serene, luminous skies. At his best, as in the radiant A Quiet Day near Manchester, he was capable of equaling the finest work of fellow marine painters John Frederick Kensett, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Martin Johnson Heade. A Quiet Day near Manchester, 1873, depicts a scene on the Massachusetts coast north of Boston and seems to have been particularly inspired by Kensett, who had died unexpectedly the year before. The mass of meticulously delineated rocks at the left side of the composition and the expansive sweep of sea and sky bring to mind works such as Kensett's late Beach near Beverly, also in the Gallery's collection. Although Bricher painted many pictures over the course of his long career (he continued working until his death in 1908), the superb A Quiet Day near Manchester is unsurpassed.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 67


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Gerold Wunderlich & Co., New York), in 1983; Dr. Robert Aaronson, Branford, Connecticut; purchased 1989 through (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York) by Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Los Angeles; acquired 2008 by gift and purchase by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1983

  • An American View: 1792-1961, Wunderlich and Company, Inc., New York, 1983, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1989

  • Loan to display with permanent collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1989-1990.

Bibliography

2009

  • Anderson, Nancy. "Alfred Thompson Bricher, A Quiet Day near Manchester." National Gallery of Art no. 40 (Spring 2009): 18-19, repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: AT Bricher / 1873; on reverse: A Quiet Day / Near Manchester / by AT Bricher / 1873

Wikidata ID

Q20188767


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