Young Lady in the Orchard

From Mattatuck Museum

Alfred Thompson Bricher (created by)
Mattatuck Historical Soc (owned by)

1879 (Date manufactured/created)

ink, watercolor, china white

paper

17 3/4 in. H X 9 3/4 in. W Measurement Notes: Dimensions Extent: overall
Framed?: Yes

Image of a young girl wearing a white lawn dress and standing next to a profusely flowering tree. Girl stands in deep grass of the corner of a field / meadow bordered with a stone wall. Beyond the wall is a view of the ocean with ships. Girl is playing with the while flowers of the tree and is staring straight at viewer. This is one of the figure pieces described in an 1880 article in 'The Art Journal'. The model, who appears in other works of 1879, is holding an apple branch in bloom, a motif also reproduced in a Bircher still life titled 'Apple Blossoms' published in the 1880 'Art Journal'. -- Primarily known for his marine paintings of sparkling water and hypnotic waves, Alfred Bircher (1837-1908) painted a small number of works devoted to the figure for six years beginning in 1878. This was a period when the artist was experimenting with still lives, when he may have been responding to the increasing popularity of the genre scenes in the market. While scholars think the young woman in these paintings is too idealized to be a particular woman, these paintings were created near the time of Bircher's second marriage in 1881.

Gift of Mildred Thaler Cohen, 1999; Seymour R. Thaler and Mildred Thaler Cohen Collection

Accession/ID Number 99.25.5