Alfred T. Bricher was an American painter. A landscape painter who primarily painted seascapes, he was the son of an Englishman who had emigrated to the USA in 1820. While working in business, Bricher took art lessons at the Lowell Institute in Boston, MA, and by 1859 was able to set himself up as a painter in Newburyport, MA. His subject-matter derived from sketches made during his summer travels along the Maine and Massachusetts coasts and to the Bay of Fundy; during the winter he worked these into finished paintings. In 1869 Bricher moved to New York, where a lucrative arrangement with the chromolithography firm of Louis Prang & Co. gave his work wide exposure through commercial reproduction.
Bricher exhibited annually at the National Academy of Design in New York. A fine watercolour painter, he was also an active member of the American Society of Painters in Water-Colors. A steady stream of buyers brought him financial and popular success, enabling him to own homes in Staten Island and Southampton, NY. Bricher’s work reflected the Luminist aesthetic of sharply defined panoramic views suffused with crisp, clear light. He was particularly partial to low tide scenes (e.g. Fog Clearing, Grand Manan, c. 1898; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum). His work lacked variety, though it was invariably painted with a high degree of finish. (Source: Oxford Art Online)
