Hugh Henry Breckenridge 1870-1937

Distinguished as an influential art teacher for more than forty years, Hugh Henry Breckenridge was born in Leesburg, Virginia, but spent most of his adult life in Philadelphia. Breckenridge enrolled as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1887, and three years later he was awarded the prestigious Cresson Traveling Scholarship, which enabled him to spend a year abroad in Europe. Breckenridge was deeply influenced by the Impressionist art that he encountered there, and indeed he later reflected, “I must have been born an Impressionist.” A subsequent trip to Europe in 1909 exposed Breckenridge to more recent trends in avant-garde art.

As he gradually absorbed the influences of Modernism, Breckenridge’s painting style went through a variety of phases. Though he began as an impressionist, his work became more boldly expressive over the years as he experimented more freely with color. By the 1920s, he had ventured fully into abstraction, however he continued to work representationally as well, and towards the end of his life he returned to his earlier Neo-Impressionist landscapes and still-life paintings.

Although Breckenridge began painting abstractly during the 1920s, he continued to produce landscape paintings up until his death in 1937. This is consistent with his constant experimentation with different stylistic approaches, and it reflects his belief that an artist should always continue searching for new problems. He was once known to have said, “There is one thing which I or any other artist must have – and that is absolute freedom. I see no reason why the painter should not have the same opportunity as the poet or musician to write one kind of verse today and another tomorrow.”