| Facts/Data
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Birth
1870 (Leesburg, Virginia)
Death
1937 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Lived/Active
Pennsylvania/Massachusetts
Photo submitted by Marian Clark
Often Known For
modernist-leaning landscape, portrait and abstract painting
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Categories of Interest
Impressionists Pre 1940
San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exhibition 1915
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following biography, submitted November 2002, is from Marian Clark of Colorado. She is a great-grand daughter of the artist.
Hugh Henry Breckenridge was long associated with Philadelphia as a modernist painter and teacher. From 1887 to 1892, he was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he taught for more than forty years.
In 1892, he was awarded a scholarship enabling him to study in Paris at the Academie Julian with William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) and to travel through Europe, going with the Pennsylvania impressionist Walter E. Schofield (1869-1944).
His subsequent landscapes, portraits, and figure paintings reveal the influence of impressionism and an overwhelming fascination with color. His first solo exhibition in 1904 included both paintings and pastels. Breckenridge also produced many commissioned portraits, which provided him with a source of income; these exhibit the dazzling brushwork typical of society portraiture of the period.
A second trip to Europe with Elmer Schofield in 1909 made Breckenridge aware of more avant-garde trends. During the 1910s, he worked alternately in a vigorous neo-impressionist technique, which he referred to as "tapestry painting,' and in a somewhat academic style enriched by an expressionist palette. These paintings gained for him national recognition as a foremost modernist whose art was easily accessible to the public.
In 1922, Breckenridge began exhibiting abstract paintings, some of which recall the Improvisations of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). These abstractions of irregularly shaped, colored planes most commonly suggest the nature or the velocity of modern life. Above all they demonstrate his fascination with the theoretical basis of color.
Breckenridge began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1894. During the summer of 1900 he and Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912) established the Darby School of Painting in Darby, Pennsylvania; Breckenridge later established his own school in East Gloucester, Massachusetts. In 1919 he became director of fine arts at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. In his last years Breckenridge sometimes returned to impressionism, painting landscapes of Gloucester and still life paintings.
Marian Clark also provides this personal history:
Hugh Henry was married to Roxanna Grace Holme, and together they had two children, one of which died very young of dysentery, and the other and second born who was Margaret Holme Breckenridge, aka Peggy, my grandmother. Peggy was also an artist and posed often in the classes her father taught.
When Roxanna died, Hugh married one of his students, Dorothy Dozier, who then became Dorothy Dozier Breckenridge. His estate went mostly to Dorothy, who sold most of his work to the Valley House Gallery in Texas, but his daughter from his first marriage had her own collection as well. Donald Vogal and his wife, Margaret, added a room onto their home to store the paintings until they could be restretched and framed. Donald was also an artist and very much admired the work of Breckenridge.
Donald commissioned John Carr to do a story in the American Art Review of my grandfather (1967). The Vogels held an exhibit, entitled "Hugh Breckenridge," of his work and published a small book with illustrations.
Dorothy and Donald were good friends for years; however, Dorothy suddenly ceased contact with Donald (probably because of health issues). I spoke with Donald Vogel in 1998 (in his 80s). His son and daughter-in-law now operate the gallery. It is not known where the rest of Dorothy's estate of paintings went after she died (she only kept about six of them (in 1981) nor the medals she possessed reflecting those awards. Dorothy never remarried apparently and has no heirs.
ASSOCIATIONS
Associate, National Academy of Design, New York City, 1913
New York Watercolor Club
Philadelphia Watercolor Club
Connecticut Academy of Fine Art
Society of Washington Artists
Southern States Art League
North Shore Artists Association, Gloucester, Mass.
American Federation of Arts
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Los Angeles County Museum
San Francisco Museum of Art
Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
AWARDS
Atlanta Expo, 1895 (medal)
Paris Expo, 1900 (prize)
Pan American Expo, Buffalo, 1901 (medal)
Society of Washington Etchers, 1903 (prize)
Philadelphia Art Club, 1907 (Medal)
Washington Watercolor Club, 1908 (prize)
Buenos Aires Expo, 1910 (medal)
Pan Pacific Expo, San Francisco, 1915 (gold)
| |
Biography from Turak Gallery of American Art:
| Hugh
Henry Breckenridge, or 'Brecky' as he was known to his friends, was a
Leesburg, Virginia, born painter who established himself on the
Philadelphia art scene just before 1890, and remained a fixture there
until his death in 1937.
Throughout his lengthy career,
Breckenridge progressed artistically from impressionist to 'abstracted'
to wholly non-representational styles of landscape, still life, figure
studies, compositions and portraits. Many works from each phase and
category were regularly displayed publicly not only in Philadelphia,
but also in legions of other regional, national, and international
exhibitions. As a result, Breckenridge corralled volumes of admiring
reviews and a host of important awards and medals.
Breckenridge
was also a member of several pivotal art organizations and exhibition
juries. In addition, for decades he was an esteemed art teacher at the
Pennsylvania Academy, the Darby [Pa.] School of Painting [with Thomas
Anshutz], and the Breckenridge School of Art [by himself] at
Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Over the years his associates [some
of whom were his former pupils] included Thomas Anshutz, Arthur B.
Carles, William Merritt Chase, Charles Demuth, Charles Grafly, Robert
Henri, John Marin, Walter Elmer Schofield, John Sloan and many other
leading lights of Philadelphia and East Coast art. His students, who
almost without exception adored their master, altogether must have
numbered in the thousands. Without doubt Breckenridge was a widely
known and respected member of this country's artistic community during
most of his active life.
Yet Breckenridge has received little
attention from art historians, despite the increased popular interest
in American art in recent years. It is true that his posthumous
anonymity has been partially alleviated by a retrospective show of his
work in Dallas in 1967, and more recently by a display of 'Pennsylvania
Academy Moderns' in 1975, and by two important Bicentennial exhibitions
in Philadelphia, which included examples from that of a dozen years
ago; he is forgotten. His once stellar reputation has suffered, in Anne
d'Harnoncourt's apt phrase, 'a virtual eclipse'.
The adult
Breckenridge recalled that as a Leesburg youngster he was 'always
drawing at school, like most boys,' but by age fifteen he founded
himself able to think of nothing but drawing and painting - much to the
detriment of his school work. How did this distracted youth become some
thirty years later, a jewel in Philadelphia's cultural crown, and a
frequently featured 'performer' in the city's newspapers? [e.g..,
'Master of Color and Draftsmanship', 1922]. Certainly the key was his
enrollment, through the urging of his teacher in Leesburg, Paul
Laughlin, as a student in the Pennsylvania Academy in the Fall of 1887.
This modes event was the beginning of an association that was to endure
for half a century.
. . . Ultimately, however, Breckenridge
remained loyal to more contemplative and traditional subject matter.
His later works were often floral still lifes, or depictions of the
Gloucester harbor in Massachusetts, which was only an open door or
window away from his waterfront studio. Gloucester was the location of
many of Breckenridge's most treasured associations, especially those
connected with his art school. 'Gloucester has everything the artist
wants except mountains,' he told an interviewer in 1926, and obviously
his opinion changed little over the last decade of his life.
His
paintings of the harbor were usually based upon his own photographs of
the subject, but in most cases the representational aspects were
secondary to the breadth of form of the sails, hulls, clouds and water,
and, of course, to the luxuriant colors that can be found in "Red
Sails" of 1925, for example. His pictures of Gloucester are nostalgic,
vibrant, and shimmering outdoor still lifes.
Although in these
works one may discern influences from Cezanne, Derian and Feininger,
among others, the ultimate sources for Breckenridge's harbor scenes are
Monet's views of Holland, Argenteuil and La Grenouilliere. Thus, at the
end of his career, he returned to his own artistic beginnings in
impressionism.
Source:
Gerald L. Carr, Hugh Henry Breckenridge, "A Philadelphia Modernist", American Art Review, May 1978.
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Biography from Roughton Galleries,Inc:
| Hugh Henry Breckenridge was long associated with Philadelphia as a modernist painter and teacher. From 1887 to 1892 he was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he then taught for more than forty years. In 1892 he was awarded a scholarship enabling him to study in Paris at the Academie Julian with William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) and to travel through Europe, going with the Pennsylvania impressionist Walter E. Schofield (1869-1944).
His subsequent landscapes, portraits, and figure paintings reveal the influence of impressionism and an overwhelming fascination with color. His first solo exhibition in 1904 included both paintings and pastels. Breckenridge also produced many commissioned portraits, which provided him with a source of income; these exhibit the dazzling brushwork typical of society portraiture of the period. A second trip to Europe with Schofield in 1909 made Breckenridge aware of more avant-garde trends.
During the 1910s he worked alternately in a vigorous neoimpressionist technique, which he referred to as "tapestry painting,' and in a somewhat academic style enriched by an expressionist palette. These paintings gained for him national recognition as a foremost modernist whose art was easily accessible to the public.
In 1922 Breckenridge began exhibiting abstract paintings, some of which recall the Improvisations of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). These abstractions of irregularly shaped, colored planes most commonly suggest the nature or the velocity of modern life. Above all they demonstrate his fascination with the theoretical basis of color. Breckenridge began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1894. During the summer of 1900 he and Thomas Anshutz (18S1-1912) established the Darby School of Painting in Darby, Pennsylvania; Breckenridge later established his own school in East Gloucester, Massachusetts.
In 1919 he became director of fine arts at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. In his last years Breckenridge sometimes returned to impressionism, painting landscapes of Gloucester and still life paintings.
MEMBERSHIPS:
Associate, National Academy of Design, New York City, 1913
New York Watercolor Club
Philadelphia Watercolor Club
Connecticut Academy of Fine Art
Society of Washington Artists
Southern States Art League
North Shore Artists Association, Gloucester, Mass.
American Federation of Arts
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Los Angeles County Museum
San Francisco Museum of Art
Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
AWARDS
Atlanta Expo, 1895 (medal)
Paris Expo, 1900 (prize)
Pan American Expo, Buffalo, 1901 (medal)
Society of Washington Etchers, 1903 (prize)
Philadelphia Art Club, 1907 (Medal)
Washington Watercolor Club, 1908 (prize)
Buenos Aires Expo, 1910 (medal)
Pan Pacific Expo, San Francisco, 1915 (gold) |
Biography from Charleston Renaissance Gallery:
| A Virginian by birth, Hugh Henry Breckenridge became a fixture in the vibrant late nineteenth century art community in Philadelphia, earning renown as both a painter and beloved teacher. A precocious artist from an early age, Breckenridge enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1887, launching an association that would endure for fifty years. A subsequent scholarship funded the artist’s first
foreign study in Paris, where he received instruction from Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Louis Ferrier, and Jacques Doucet at the Academie Julian in 1892. While abroad, Breckenridge traveled extensively throughout Europe and was influenced by the work of master impressionists. A second European tour in 1909 awakened Breckenridge to the avant garde European trends of that period,
including fauvism and, later, cubism.
Back in America, Breckenridge became an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1894, a post he held for decades. With his colleague Thomas Anshutz, he later established the Darby School of Painting in nearby Darby and eventually opened his own school in Gloucester, Massachussetts. Breckenridge maintained a waterfront studio in the seaside town, its coastline and landscape the frequent subjects for his canvas. Breckenridge also executed lucrative portrait commissions.
Breckenridge’s oeuvre reflects stylistic versatility, an abiding fascination with color, and signature brushwork, whether displayed in the impressionistic landscapes of his early and late career, or in the more modernist abstract works of his mid-life. He exhibited widely, garnering prizes, critical acclaim, and commercial success, and was a member of the most prestigious American art organizations; in 1913, he was named as associate of the National Academy of Design. In addition, Breckenridge enjoyed close associations with other leading artists of the day, including Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, Arthur B. Carles, Walter Schofield, and John Marin, among others.
This essay is copyrighted by the Charleston Renaissance Gallery and may not be reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the Hicklin Galleries, LLC.
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