19th Century Paintings

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...