John Leslie Breck

John Leslie Breck (1860–1899) was an American player who died at the age of 39. During his immediate life he painted a number of notable works, and is qualified with introducing Impressionism to the United States as soon as a play in in Boston in 1890. He died in 1899, reported as death by asphyxiation from lighting gas poisoning, and is interred in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston. His works remain in a number of American museums and private collections.

Breck was born off Hong Kong at sea in 1860, the son of a US Naval Officer. Returning to the United States, he grew stirring in Newton, Massachusetts, where he attended the Governor’s Academy for a year in the past matriculating from St. Mark's School in 1877. Following his graduation, the pubescent artist studied painting at the Royal Munich Academy. Breck returned to Boston in 1882 and spent the next-door part of his career painting in New England.

In 1886, John Leslie Breck returned to Europe to examination in Paris at the Académie Julian. While at school, Breck acknowledged many friends that would impact his artistic style. He studied below Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, and as a consequence met a handful of fellow American artists studying abroad. In 1887 Breck, along later than fellow American artists Willard Metcalf and Theodore Robinson, traveled to Giverny, France, home of the impressionist master Claude Monet, where he was befriended by Claude Monet. Breck introduced impressionism to the United States in 1890.

Breck by then had already absorbed both the formal aspects of Dutch Mastery. At Giverny he bookish and adopted the impressionist style and techniques of Claude Monet.

Despite some success exhibiting in the Salon in 1888 and 1889, Breck left Paris after breaking later Monet’s stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschédé-Monet.

Upon his recompense to Boston in 1890 he exhibited at the St. Botolph Club in 1890. At that show, and subsequently his long-lasting paintings of the period, one can note that the atmospheric twist and perky colors of his landscapes of Massachusetts, Giverny, and Venice toss around not on your own his great talent as a landscape player but his integration into the great artistic action of impressionism. He died in 1899.

There is a notable 1891 portrait of Breck in France by his buddy James Carroll Beckwith upon permanent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.

The John Leslie Breck fund, a legacy of the artist's estate, at St. Marks School of Southborough continues to Keep the Good arts there.