Alfred Thompson Bricher and the Representation of Seaside Tourism, 1871-1908

After the Civil War tourism in America flourished. Sites that had been visited since before the war continued to be popular and new sites sprang up all along the eastern sea board. Throngs of middle-class tourists headed to these seaside resorts, while to a lesser extent, members of the upper-class also frequented some of the same sites. These tourists included Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908), who often made these places and the people who visited them into the subject of his art. While Bricher's career has been studied monographically, his participation in and contribution to the tourist phenomenon has not been previously considered. Through an examination of specific pictures and groups of images Bricher's perceptions and opinions about the advent of Victorian vacationing at the shore can be articulated. His paintings show his interest in the divergent worlds that defined Victorian seaside leisure. In Indian Rock, Narragansett Bay, Bricher demonstrates an ability to speak directly to the upper-class audience whom he targeted as the buyers of this work. The painting represents his visual interpretation of contemporary social stratification. He also depicted the summer watering-place with specific attention to middle-class women at leisure--on the beach, around the vacation bungalow, enjoying well-deserved free time. In his images of Victorian women at the shore, Bricher contributed to the artistic construction of a standardized cultural ideal of femininity. Bricher also satisfied the period's fascination with the Romantic perception of isolated stretches of coastline such as were found on the remote Canadian island of Grand Manan. In this series of paintings, he identified with and represented a masculine notion of adventure as a confrontation with savage nature. The diverse topography of the island also facilitated his development of more contemplative ideals. Fascinated with tourism and tourist sites throughout his career, Bricher contributed in diverse and revealing ways to the representation of a key aspect of post-bellum American culture.