Alfred Thompson Bricher Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Alfred Thompson Bricher started his profession as a businessman in Boston. When not working, he studied at the Lowell Institute. He also studied with Albert Bierstadt and William Morris Hunt. He achieved important expertise in making landscape studies from nature, and after 1858 committed himself to the arts as a profession. He opened a studio in Boston and met with some success there.

In 1868 Alfred Thompson Bricher moved to New York City, and at the National Academy of Design that year, he exhibited Mill-Stream at Newburyport. Soon thereafter he started to utilize watercolors in preference to oils, and in 1873 was chosen a member of the American Watercolor Society. In the 1870s, he did maritime seascape paintings.

As a lover of sea life and the ocean, he bought a home in the 1890s close to the sea on Staten Island where he had views of the Atlantic Ocean and Raritan Bay. He lived and painted there until his death.

Alfred Thompson Bricher was one of the last painters of the famed Hudson River School. By the end of his life, his style of painting that included landscapes and luminism fell out of style, with Modern Art becoming the premier artistic movement. As his style of art faded, so did his fame.

Over time Bricher's artwork garnered more consideration and by the 1990s he began to be credited as one of the nineteenth century's noteworthy maritime painters. A self-taught Luminist, he investigated the impacts of light and how it reflected, refracted, and assimilated on landscapes and seascapes.

Art Movement: Hudson River School, White Mountain Art.
Artists Influencing Alfred Thompson Bricher: Albert Bierstadt, William Morris Hunt.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.