John Leslie Breck was born in 1860 on his father’s clipper ship in the South Pacific Ocean. He spent most of his childhood outside Boston in Newton, Massachusetts, and briefly attended The Governor’s Academy from 1868 to 1869. In 1878, at the age of eighteen, Breck packed up and went to Germany to enroll at the Royal Academy in Munich, which boasts many notable alumni, including William Merritt Chase. Breck was influenced by the Dutch Masters, and his early paintings reflect his Munich training, employing thick brushwork, and dark, earthy palettes. In 1882 Breck briefly returned to Boston where his attention began to turn towards still lifes and landscapes. However, in 1886 Breck returned to Europe, this time he headed to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian, and studied under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph LaFebvre. The following spring and summer of 1887 Breck, along with Willard Metcalf and Theodore Robinson, headed for Giverny. While there, Breck became close with Claude Monet, and his works began to reflect his influence. Breck’s palettes became lighter, his brushwork looser, and his subjects were more informal and outdoors. It is hard to deny the heavy influence Monet had upon Breck when looking at Monet’s famous Haystacks series of 1890-1891 alongside Breck’s Studies of an Autumn Day, 1890 which includes fifteen paintings of a haystack throughout the course of an Autumn day. In 1888 Breck began to experiment with painting by moonlight, a practice he would explore more heavily upon his (temporary) move to Venice in 1897. In 1889 Breck was shown at the Paris Exposition Universalle for Autumn at Giverny (The New Moon) [Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL], as well as being featured for the second time at the Paris Salon. After Monet’s discovery of Breck’s romantic relationship with his stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschédé-Monet, Breck packed up and headed back stateside. Upon his return in 1890, he had his first solo exhibition at Boston’s St. Botolph Club, where his impressionistic paintings of Monet’s gardens and houseboat were featured. That same year Breck was initiated as a member in the St. Botolph Club. From 1893 until his sudden death in 1899, Breck was heavily exhibited. He received a solo exhibition at the Chase Gallery in New York; he was included in exhibitions at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, again at the St. Botolph Club, Boston, as well as the Newton Club, Boston, and he was included in The National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition of 1898. After his death, a memorial exhibition in his honor was held at the National Arts Club in New York in 1900. John Leslie Breck is credited with introducing Impressionism to The United States, thus inspiring a new wave of American Impressionists at the turn of the century.