HUGH HENRY BRECKENRIDGE (American, 1870-1937). Oriental Jar. Oil on canvas . 30 x 25 inches (76.2 x 63.5 cm). Signed low...

Description

HUGH HENRY BRECKENRIDGE (American, 1870-1937)
Oriental Jar
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 inches (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
Signed lower left: Hugh H. Breckenridge

PROVENANCE:
Lexington Trust, Beverly Hills, California.

Long associated with Philadelphia as a modernist painter, Hugh Henry Breckenridge studied from 1887 to 1892 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he then taught for over forty years. He trained in the early 1890s at the Académie Julian with William-Adolphe Bouguereau and traveled throughout Europe with the Pennsylvania Impressionist Walter E. Schofield. Breckenridge's landscapes, portraits, and still lifes of the time reveal the influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, particularly a fascination with color. For example, Oriental Jar, dating to this early period, combines brilliant jewel-tone coloration with an emphasis on au courant Asian artifacts.

A second trip to Europe with Schofield in 1909 made Breckenridge aware of more avant-garde trends. During the 1910s, he worked in a vigorous Neo-Impressionist style, which he referred to as "tapestry painting," and by 1922, he was exhibiting abstract paintings recalling the improvisations of Wassily Kandinsky. The landscapes of Gloucester, where he had established a school, inspired the painterly canvases of his late career.

Breckenridge is represented in numerous national museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans.


More information about HUGH HENRY BRECKENRIDGE. See also: Breckenridge, Hugh Henry, Hugh Henry Breckenridge Artist.

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