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Slightly below us and at a distance, water gently laps at sandy beach that curves alongside massive, craggy outcroppings in this panoramic horizontal landscape painting. Scrubby grass and low-slung trees dot an area of gray rocks in the lower left corner of the painting. A vivid yellow and black insect lands on a nearly horizontal tree trunk close to us, and two women sit and stand on the rocks farther out. One wears a red shirt and holds a narrow yellow parasol, and the other wears a lilac-purple, full-skirted dress and a yellow cap. The outcroppings rise vertically just beyond the women. Dark green plants grow along a ridge to the left. The remains of logs or beams and perhaps cloth is near the breaking surf of the beach, at the bottom center of the painting. The beach curves in a C-shape and then turns back to create a point just beyond the outcroppings. The white sails of a few boats sit on the slate-blue water, which reaches back to the hazy horizon, which is about halfway up the composition. A few spots of bright white or gray clouds dot the otherwise washed out, ivory-white sky above. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “A.T. Bricher 1873.”
National Gallery of Art · Painting
A Quiet Day near Manchester
Alfred Thompson Bricher
- Date
- 1873
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 50.8 x 97.16 cm (20 x 38 1/4 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 2008.66.1
- Credit line
- Paul Mellon Fund, Avalon Fund, and Gift of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr.
- Time span
- 1851 to 1875
- Department
- CAB
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- American
- United States
- landscape
- Acquired after publication of American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I [A-L]
- Realist
- Beach
- Rocks
- Manchester
Provenance
(Gerold Wunderlich & Co., New York), in 1983; Dr. Robert Aaronson, Branford, Connecticut; purchased 1989 through (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York) by Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Los Angeles; acquired 2008 by gift and purchase by NGA.
Inscription
lower left: AT Bricher / 1873; on reverse: A Quiet Day / Near Manchester / by AT Bricher / 1873
NGA object ID 140908. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.