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Echo Lake and Mount Lafayette
Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837–1908)
Signed and dated lower left: A T Bricher. NY 1869
Oil on canvas, 20 x 40 inches, Private collection
Echo Lake and Mount Lafayetterepresents one of the most famous vistas in the White Mountains: the view looking southeast over Echo Lake, with Eagle Cliff, Mount Lafayette, and Franconia Notch looming in the distance. In the nineteenth century, tourists from cities such as Boston and New York hiked to this site to enjoy a place that guidebooks of the time celebrated for its calmness and serenity.
Alfred Thompson Bricher’s image captures the sense of place conjured up in this passage. The calm surface of the lake, the fuzzy contours that soften the hard edges of the cliffs and mountains in the distance, and the warm, red foliage in the foreground creates a sense of tranquility, as evoked in King’s description of the “nestling” lake, the “gentle edges” of the breeze, and the water’s “soft flashes.”
