Breckenridge is long associated with the city of Philadelphia, where he was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and, later, a teacher for forty years. Along with Henry McCarter and the younger artist Arthur B. Carles, Breckenridge was one of three Academy instructors who brought a modernist spirit to the school in the early twentieth century. He exhibited extensively in the Academy annuals, was given one-man shows in 1904 and 1934, and was awarded the Academy Gold Medal of Honor in 1919.