Artist Fact Sheet
ArtBreak Tour: “Labels: Do We Need Them?”
Artist’s Name: John Leslie Breck Image of Work: 
Nationality: American (1860-1899) Title of Work: Suzanne Hoschede Monet Sewing
Date: 1888
Background:
Always known as Jack, Breck was born aboard a clipper ship under the command of his father. His father died when he was 5; following that, his mother moved her family to Boston area.
After a boarding school education, Breck studied at either art academies or with artists in Munich, Antwerp, and eventually Paris.
While in Paris, he and several artist friends decide to spend the 1887 summer painting in Giverny (70 miles northwest of Paris). Stories vary as to whether the group knew that Claude Monet had a home there and thus made Giverny their destination, or that they surprisingly ran across him in the village. Nevertheless, Breck was most instrumental in establishing an American artists’ colony in Giverny. Breck spent a significant amount of time year round in Giverny for five years while his colleagues returned to Paris and elsewhere for the winter months. Giverny remained a retreat for American artists until 1915. In fact, from the late 1880s to end of WWI, 70 percent of visitors to Giverny were Americans. “Quite an American colony has gathered, I am told, at Giverny….A few pictures just received from these young men show that they have all got the blue-green color of Monet’s impressionism and “got it bad”.” [Art Amateur writer, 1887]
Breck became close to the Monet family; an 1899 photo shows Breck with Monet, Monet’s future second wife Alice Hoschede, and her three daughters. One step-daughter Suzanne is the subject of this painting. Another step-daughter, Blanche, and Breck become romantically involved, thus ending the mentoring relationship between Monet and Breck.
After leaving Giverny in 1891, Breck returnedto the Boston area where he lived and exhibited until his sudden death at age 39. During these Boston years, he appliedImpressionist techniques and color palette to the Charles River and surrounding Massachusetts scenes.
● 1889: Breck entered a work in the Paris Exposition Universelle: critical success; Honorable Mention.
● 1890: His first solo show in Boston at the St. Botolph Club. Reaction was mostly negative. (Perhaps: American critics and audiences not yet familiar/comfortable with this new art movement.)
● 1895: Second solo show, same venue in Boston: a critical success.
Who/What influenced the artist’s work?
Most significant influence: the father of French Impressionism, Claude Monet. Typically reclusive, Monet told Breck that while”I wont’ (sic) give you lessons….we’ll wander about the fields and woods and paint together….”
In fact, Breck’s “Studies of an Autumn Day,” is a direct reference and homage to Monet. The difference is that Breck completed 15 small paintings (one below) of haystacks in changing light in three days, while Monet painted his haystacks in all seasons over several years. 
Materials Used: Oil on canvas
Creative Process: Once he began work in Giverny, Breck replaced his palette (Royal Academy of Munich: a limited range of dark colors) with Impressionist colors. And he eliminated the color black since it was viewed as reflecting the absence of light. Instead, painted shadows in mauve and purple. Also, his brush technique evolved into a looser stroke.
His landscapes and portraits displayed Impressionist techniques. He applied these to his New England subjects – Charles River in Boston and the Massachusetts coastline -- upon his return to Boston area.
How does this piece tie to the theme: “Labels; Do we need them?”
It’s an example of a work for which its title label adds no new information.
In his lifetime, Breck was ‘labelled’ the Head of the American Impressionists”. If not for his early death, he might still be thought of as such. Instead, we more readily recognize the names of Childe Hassam and Mary Cassatt as famous American Impressionists. Works by both Hassam and Cassatt are in this gallery.
Questions to engage tour participants:
Since it doesn’t need an explanatory label, is this work deceptively simple or simply deceptive?
What do you think is the most engaging element of this painting? (The subject? The background?)
What kind of a mood does it convey? How does it affect you?
Additional thoughts: “Jack Breck started the new school of painting in America….By [his] tragic death, our country loses a great genius, though it will probably never know it.”—fellow painter John Henry Twachtman
Helpful resources:
“A Sense of Light and Air in Landscapes,” Bruce Weber, American Artist, April 1997
Americans in Paris, 1860-1900 Exhibition Catalog. Kathleen Adler, Erica E. Hirshler, H. Barbara Weinberg. The National Gallery (London); The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). 2006
Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865-1915. D. Scott Atkinson, Carole L. Shelby, Jochen Wierich. Tetra Foundation for the Arts. 1992
Text Label for Painting
www.AmericanArtist.com
www.Askart.com/artist_bio/John_Leslie_Breck
www.myAmericanArtist.com
Alice Ross October 2016
