John Leslie Breck

This biography from the archives of AskART.com.

John Leslie Breck was an early exponent of the "new painting", avant-garde style, of Impressionism. Born in New York in 1860, Breck grew up in the Boston area. He obtained his art training at the Munich Royal Academy, learning rapid brushstroke and dark tonalism. Beginning in 1886, he studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, and soon became one of the original settlers of the important Impressionist art colony in Giverny, France.

Johns brother, Edward Breck, wrote of Johns experience in Giverny, in an article of March 8, 1895 in the Boston Evening Transcript. He describes the summer of 1887, when John, Edward, their mother, as well as Theodore Robinson, Theodore Wendel, and Blair Bruce were the original American colony in Giverny. Curiously, Edward Brecks account of their discovery of Giverny does not mention Monet, and rather that the town was a chance happening, based on the regions charms, although it is doubtful Breck was completely unaware of Monet when he went there.

He did come to know Monet well, and Brecks paintings reflect his influence as well as his own adroitness in the assimilation of impressionist brushwork, and strong sense of composition. In 1888, in Giverny, Breck began to paint by moonlight. He carried this moonlight theme to Venice in 1896 and 1897 (Santa Maria della Salute by Moonlight). It was said at the time that his style marked the turning of a new chapter in painting. At Giverny, Breck not only came to know Monet, he also became romantically involved with his stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschede-Monet. Monet intervened, however, and the disappointed suitor Breck left Giverny in 1890 and returned to Boston.

Brecks achievements as an American artist constituted some of the earliest fully realized impressionistic paintings in this country. His works influenced the positive movement of Impressionism that occurred in the Boston area in the late 1880s and 1890s.

Brecks close association with Monet can be seen in pictures Breck completed of Monets houseboat and garden, which were shown in Brecks first one-man art show in Boston, in 1890, at the St. Botolph Club, the year of his return to America. From that time on, he created some of his most memorable works, many of them focusing on sites along the Massachusetts coastline.

He died in 1899 at the age of thirty-nine.