J. Alden Weir - Legacy

Legacy

The most critically acclaimed painting by Weir is The Red Bridge from 1895. It is a technical masterpiece, displaying a truss bridge that spanned the Shetucket River down the street from Weir’s Windham farm. He used complementary colors to unite the image with equal tonal quality and to depict the realistic reflection of the bridge seen on the water. While there is pictorial unity in the piece, Weir contrasted the bridge and its surrounding setting by placing the red bridge against the greens of woods and the blues of water and sky and by juxtaposing the geometric man made bridge with the natural sinuous curves of the trunks and branches.

Today Weir's paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D. C.; Brigham Young University's Museum of Art, Provo, Utah; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Weir's farm and studio at Branchville are protected as the Weir Farm National Historic Site; the Weir family continues ownership of the Windham farm.