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ALFRED THOMPSON BRICHER (American, 1837-1908). Coastline with Distant Ships. Watercolor on paper. 14 x 20-1/4 inches (35...

Lot: 66004, Auction: 2009 November Signature European & American Art #5030

Sold for: Not Sold
Ended: Nov 10, 2009
Item Activity: 0 Internet/mail bidders
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Description:

ALFRED THOMPSON BRICHER (American, 1837-1908)
Coastline with Distant Ships
Watercolor on paper
14 x 20-1/4 inches (35.6 x 51.4 cm)
Signed lower left: A. Bricher


PROVENANCE:
Private collection, New York.

Among the finest American marine painters who flourished during the last quarter of the 19th century, Alfred Thompson Bricher occupies a special place owing to his focus on the quietest aspect of the sea, low tide. Rather like his near-contemporary, Martin Johnson Heade, who was the first artist to explore in paint the landscape of New England salt marshes (previously considered topographically unremarkable), Bricher explored the sea at low tide without the pictorial drama of a wind-swept sky, churning surf, or vertical elements of interest. Rather, as in the present work, Coastline with Distant Ships, the New Hampshire-born Bricher took as his actual subject the crisp, clear light which illuminates the three zones of the paintings (earth, water and sky). The effect is quite modern in its minimalism: three bands of color, very near in tonality, are rendered with his feathery and tender brushwork.

Although during his lifetime Bricher's sea paintings in oil and watercolor brought him critical and financial success, enabling him to own homes in Staten Island and Southampton, New York, his work slipped from popularity following his death. Art historical scholarship from the 1970s and 80s reestablished Bricher's importance as a Luminist painter and watercolorist. The 1973 retrospective exhibition of his paintings mounted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art revived interest in his artistic achievement, and his work was subsequently included in two landmark exhibitions of American landscape painting, the National Gallery of Art's 1980 "American Light" and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1987 "American Paradise."


Bricher, Alfred Thompson: . American painter, 1837-1908

Condition Report*:

Very good condition; not examined outside of frame.

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