A Quiet Day near Manchester

Alfred Thompson Bricher

National Gallery of Art

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.”