Footnotes

Provenance
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York.
Acquired by the late owners from the above, June 19, 1975.

Exhibited
Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pertaining to the Sea, March 23-May 2, 1976, no. 8, illustrated.

Alfred Thompson 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 alongside Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872), Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865), Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), and Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904). 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 and tranquil qualities of the sea.

Seascape and Shore (New England Coast) is an exquisite example in Bricher's oeuvre for its crisp handling and clarity of detail. Bricher has beautifully depicted the ocean and the waves as they gently crest and curl, break into foam, and then crash into the rocky coastline. Bricher has characteristically treated the textural qualities of the rocks and vegetation with dramatic variations of light and shadow and has captured the sun-drenched coastal atmosphere with precision. The only signs of human life are the sailboats visible in the far distance and the small boats tied up on the shore. In Seascape and Shore (New England Coast), Bricher stays in line with the philosophical beliefs of the second generation of Hudson River School painters by equating to canvas the power and resplendence of nature almost untouched by man.