Skip to main content
John Leslie Breck
1860–1899
BirthplaceHong Kong, China
Death placeBoston, Massachusetts, United States of America
BiographyJohn Leslie Breck was one of the first of the international painters who worked in the rural village of Giverny, in Normandy, France, and experimented with the loose brushstrokes, informal compositions, and bright colors associated with the style known as impressionism. The son of a naval captain, Breck was born aboard a clipper ship in the western Pacific Ocean and was educated at elite schools in the Boston area. Following graduation in 1877, he went to Germany for art training. Breck studied at the Royal Academy in Munich and also trained in Antwerp under Charles Verlat (1824–1890), a Belgian painter of historical subjects.
Breck returned to Boston in 1882 and began painting elaborate, dark-toned still life paintings as well as landscapes. In 1886 he went to Paris for two years’ study at the Académie Julian, a popular school for aspiring international artists. The following year Breck, accompanied by his mother and brother, writer Edward Breck, was among the first North American artists to live in Giverny, ninety kilometers west of Paris. He spent much of the next five years working in the village and became the first American to publicly exhibit works painted there. At the Paris Salon, a prestigious annual juried exhibition, Breck exhibited conservative paintings with some success in 1888 and 1889, but he also experimented with newer approaches to painting. Under the influence of Giverny’s most famous resident, painter Claude Monet (1840–1926), he adopted the pure color, vigorous brushwork, and informal outdoor subjects typical of impressionism. Breck was one of the very few Americans admitted to the French artist’s inner circle, and he even painted scenes in Monet’s famous garden and images of grainstacks inspired by those of his mentor. However, Monet disapproved of Breck’s romantic attachment to Blanche Hoschedé, one of the elder painter’s stepdaughters, and the two artists grew distant. Breck left Giverny in 1891 for England, where he painted and exhibited his work. He then visited California and returned to Boston in 1892. His subsequent paintings of the rural Massachusetts landscape explore the changing colors of the seasons, including winter.
The impressionist paintings Breck exhibited in 1890 at Boston’s St. Botolph’s Club caused a considerable stir as examples of the most advanced art of the day. Breck did not work exclusively in an impressionist mode, however. Both during his years in Giverny and thereafter, he also painted with the shadowed tonal effects and romantic mood sanctioned in his academic art training. During a visit to Venice in 1896–97, he painted moonlight scenes. In the mid-1890s he was an active exhibitor at the St. Botolph’s Club and at the Society of American Artists in New York City. Breck also was known as a musician and a writer of song lyrics. Although somewhat reclusive, he enjoyed the friendship and esteem of artistic friends and patrons, and the financial and emotional support of his mother and brother. His death by asphyxiation, possibly a suicide, prematurely ended the career of an artist acknowledged by his contemporaries as an American pioneer of impressionism.
Breck returned to Boston in 1882 and began painting elaborate, dark-toned still life paintings as well as landscapes. In 1886 he went to Paris for two years’ study at the Académie Julian, a popular school for aspiring international artists. The following year Breck, accompanied by his mother and brother, writer Edward Breck, was among the first North American artists to live in Giverny, ninety kilometers west of Paris. He spent much of the next five years working in the village and became the first American to publicly exhibit works painted there. At the Paris Salon, a prestigious annual juried exhibition, Breck exhibited conservative paintings with some success in 1888 and 1889, but he also experimented with newer approaches to painting. Under the influence of Giverny’s most famous resident, painter Claude Monet (1840–1926), he adopted the pure color, vigorous brushwork, and informal outdoor subjects typical of impressionism. Breck was one of the very few Americans admitted to the French artist’s inner circle, and he even painted scenes in Monet’s famous garden and images of grainstacks inspired by those of his mentor. However, Monet disapproved of Breck’s romantic attachment to Blanche Hoschedé, one of the elder painter’s stepdaughters, and the two artists grew distant. Breck left Giverny in 1891 for England, where he painted and exhibited his work. He then visited California and returned to Boston in 1892. His subsequent paintings of the rural Massachusetts landscape explore the changing colors of the seasons, including winter.
The impressionist paintings Breck exhibited in 1890 at Boston’s St. Botolph’s Club caused a considerable stir as examples of the most advanced art of the day. Breck did not work exclusively in an impressionist mode, however. Both during his years in Giverny and thereafter, he also painted with the shadowed tonal effects and romantic mood sanctioned in his academic art training. During a visit to Venice in 1896–97, he painted moonlight scenes. In the mid-1890s he was an active exhibitor at the St. Botolph’s Club and at the Society of American Artists in New York City. Breck also was known as a musician and a writer of song lyrics. Although somewhat reclusive, he enjoyed the friendship and esteem of artistic friends and patrons, and the financial and emotional support of his mother and brother. His death by asphyxiation, possibly a suicide, prematurely ended the career of an artist acknowledged by his contemporaries as an American pioneer of impressionism.