Lot 39: John Leslie Breck (1860-1899)

The River Epte with Monet's Atelier-Boat
oil on canvas
13 x 16 in. (33 x 40.6 cm.)
Painted circa 1887-90.

New York, Spanierman Gallery, American Painters in Giverny, 1885-1920, October 1993-January 1994.

W.H. Gerdts, Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, 1993, p. 11, illustrated.
R. Gomes, Impressions of Giverny: A Painter's Paradise 1883-1914, San Francisco, California, 1995, p1. 12, illustrated (as The River Epte with Monet's Floating Studio Boat).

The artist.
Gaston and Clarisse Baudy, Giverny, France, gift from the above.
Suzanne Baudy Bruno, Giverny, France, daughter of the above.
By descent to the daughter of the above, Paris, France.
Adelson Galleries, Inc., New York.
Private collection, Houston, Texas.
Private collection, Washington, D.C.

John Leslie Breck was among the first Americans to discover the charms of Giverny, France. In 1887, he promoted the village among his fellow American expatriates, many of whom also settled there, and like Breck, resided at the new Hotel Baudy, which catered to foreign artists. The hotel quickly became a focus of American expatriate activity, including, in addition to Breck, the artists Theodore Butler, Willard Metcalf, Theodore Robinson and Theodore Wendel, among others. The hotel was a short walk from Monet's celebrated home and garden, and the famous artist would occasionally entertain the Americans while also providing encouragement and artistic inspiration.

Notice of this vanguard group of American Impressionists appeared swiftly in the press. In October 1887, a critic for The Art Amateur suggested that the development of an impressionist expatriate style was immediate and profound: "Quite an American colony has gathered, I am told, at Givernay [sic], seventy miles from Paris, on the Seine, the home of Claude Monet, including our Louis Ritter, W. L. Metcalf, Theodore Wendell [sic], John Breck, and Theodore Robinson of New York. A few pictures just received from these young men show that they have got the blue-green color of Monet's impressionism and 'got it bad.'" ("Boston Art and Artists," The Art Amateur, 17, no. 5, October 1887, p. 93, as quoted in R. H. Love, Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet's Shadow, Chicago, Illinois, 1985, p. 59)

In Giverny, Monet did not interact a great deal with the American expatriates, although one of his step-daughters, Suzanne Hoschede, married the American painter Theodore Butler in 1892 (Theodore Robinson depicted the event in his painting, Wedding March (Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Chicago, Illinois)). Breck also courted another of Monet's four stepdaughters, Blanche Hoschede--a romance which Monet disapproved, not because of personal objections to Breck, but because he felt that an artist could not reliably provide for a family. The two did not pursue their romance.

In the summer of 1891, Breck embarked on a series of fifteen haystack paintings depicting the same composition painted at different hours of the day (twelve of these works are in the Terra Foundation for the Arts). Inspired by Monet's depictions of the same subject, Breck's paintings likewise depict the varying effects of light and color. The art-historian, Rosalie Gomes, describes them as "the most notable of the grain stack paintings of the early Giverny painters...Monet's influence on Breck's paintings is obvious," she continues, "yet the two series differ in several ways. Monet varied the composition of each painting, as well as the season and the lighting, but in Breck's series, each painting depicts the same elements in the same carefully structured composition, from the same perspective. Breck proceeded in the manner of a scientist, changing only one variable: the light. His paintings were smaller, too, and thus easier to carry across the countryside. But Breck must have followed Monet's method: painting several canvases at a time and working on each one for those few moments each day when the light was right. This process entailed moving all the canvases to the chosen spot in the fields every morning and packing everything up in the evenings." (Impressions of Giverny: A Painter's Paradise, 1883-1914, San Francisco, California, 1995, p. 23)

Using the same small format of thirteen by sixteen inches which he employed with his haystack paintings, Breck similarly undertook in The River Epte with Monet's Atelier-Boat to depict the fleeting effects of light. His choice of subject is, of course, a direct homage to Monet, as is the painting's dashing style. The composition is dramatic and highly finished, using sweeping color within the strong verticals of the tree trunks. Just to the right of center, Breck depicts Monet's boat, surrounded by fields painted with broken brushwork of blue, green, yellow, purple, orange and red. Like Monet, Breck preferred to paint out of doors, and the painterly and informal compositional quality of The River Epte with Monet's Atelier-Boat suggests that it was painted on the spot, along the willow and poplar lined Epte River, a favorite subject of the Giverny colony. Long owned by the Baudy family, which kept this painting for nearly a century, The River Epte with Monet's Atelier-Boat remains one of the earliest Impressionist masterworks by any American painter.

As noted by the art historian, William H. Gerdts, "John Leslie Breck may have been the most significant of the original Givernois, both in regard to his initial receptivity to Impressionism and also in the formation of the art colony there, which attracted other artists to the town. Indeed, on Breck's death in 1899, his colleague John Twachtman wrote that Breck had 'started the new school of painting in America.'" (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865-1915, Chicago, 1992, p. 48)