Lake George from Bolton's Landing

Alfred Thompson Bricher's Lake George from Bolton's Landing depicts the lake, in New York State's Adirondack Mountains, from its western shore, looking eastward toward the village of Bolton's Landing (now Bolton Landing). In this carefully organized composition, the gentle diagonals of the near horizon of trees, echoed by the receding lines of rustic fences, lead the eye toward the distant lake, bounded on its far shore by bulky mountains almost lost in the sunlit haze of late afternoon. The scene appears static in its peaceful repose, but Bricher interweaves references to time's relentless passage. Late afternoon shadows creep across the foreground, and the contrasting states of the tall trees framing the view on either side signal the gradual onset of autumn. Evidence abounds of the landscape's gradual shift from wilderness, as suggested by the mature trees and moss-covered rocks, to cultivated land marked by fences and tree stumps, to a place where city-dwellers, such as the well-dressed female tourists near the lower center of the composition, commune with nature. Such philosophical meditations on time and change animate some of the more ambitious of the marine paintings for which Bricher later became best known.

Between 1867, when he visited Lake George, and the early 1870s, Bricher painted several views of its scenery based on sketches made on site. Rich in historical association, the region was widely familiar from James Fenimore Cooper's fictional account of the French and Indian Wars, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). With the opening of rail service in 1849, Lake George became popular as a fashionable summertime destination, and artists flocked to paint its diverse scenery of dramatic heights, thick woods, and broad vistas of water dotted with small islands. Bricher's Lake George from Bolton's Landing is one of a host of contemporary renderings that memorialize the pleasures of summer holidays. As in his The Hudson River at West Point (TF 1993.17), also in the Terra Foundation collection, Bricher presents the American landscape as a place where natural beauty meets the comforts of settled life. In contrast to many of his contemporaries' views of the lake from the water's edge, Bricher presented its watery expanse as a distant, glowing backdrop for an autumnal view of rustic scenery.

Lake George from Bolton's Landing marks the culmination of Bricher's early career, in which he focused on the mountainous interior of New England and New York. In 1867, the year he painted this work, the artist married and moved from Boston to New York City, long acknowledged as America's artistic capital, and within a few years he had made marine painting his specialty. The exacting realism and precise detail of his early style remained hallmarks of his work, however, as did the structured, geometric composition and interest in the effects of light seen in this painting.

The Waters of America: 19th Century American Paintings of Rivers, Streams, Lakes, and Waterfalls, The Historic New Orleans Collection and New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, May 6–November 11, 1984. [exh. cat.]

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Americans at Home and Abroad, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 6–29, 1987.

Attitudes Toward Nature, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 30, 1995–April 21, 1996.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1996.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1999–May 7, 2000 (in modified form). [exh. cat.]

Permanent collection installation, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 9–February 11, 2001.

Painting Lake George, 1774–1900, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York (organizer). Venue: The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, June 6–September 11, 2006. [exh. cat.]

Manifest Destiny, Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Loyola University Museum of Art, May 17–August 10, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Continental Shift: Nineteenth Century American and Australian Landscape Painting, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Art Gallery of Western Australia, July 30, 2016–February 5, 2017. [exh. cat.]

Not as the Songs of other Lands: 19th century Australian and American Landscape Painting, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Ian Potter Museum of Art, March 14–June 11, 2017.

Wilmerding, John. The Waters of America: 19th-Century American Paintings of Rivers, Streams, Lakes and Waterfalls. (exh. cat., The Historic New Orleans Collection and New Orleans Museum of Art). New Orleans, Louisiana: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1984. Ill. p. 25 (black & white).

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Pl. T-51, p. 160 (color).

Lake George from Bolton's Landing, Alfred Thompson Bricher. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1996. Ill. (black & white).

Coe, Erin Budis and Gwendolyn Brooks. Painting Lake George 1774–1900. (exh. cat., The Hyde Collection). Glens Falls, New York: The Hyde Collection, 2005. Text, p. 71, pl. 23, p. 51 (color).

Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text pp. 28, 34 (checklist); Ill. Pl. 7, p. 46 (color). Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text pp. 48–49; fig. 4, p. 48 (color).