Alfred de Breanski Snr. 1852-1928

Alfred de Breanski is known perhaps more than any other artist of the late Nineteenth Century, for his ability to capture the dramatic and awesome nature of the Highlands lit by the golden light of evening or dawn passing over the mountains and casting its glow upon isolated lochs and swollen burns. For Breanski, the Highland landscape offered inexhaustible opportunities to record the power of light upon what he regarded as among the most beautiful places in Britain. He also painted upon the banks of the Thames where he kept a houseboat and on the river Wye, but is most associated with the depiction of the wilder parts of Wales and the Scottish landscape. His brother Gustave and his son Alfred Fontville de Breanski, followed Alfred’s success, painting similar subjects of Scottish lochs and glens. Although the younger Breanski’s work is often confused with that of Alfred de Breanski, they never came close to the powerful poetry of his paintings and the unrivalled panache of his light effects.

Alfred de Breanski was born at Greenwich in 1852, the eldest son of Leopold de Breanski and at the age of twenty, he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy and later at the Royal Society of artists. Despite having a large family of seven children, Alfred de Breanski output of work in the late Nineteenth Century was prolific and he painted many views at popular Scottish beauty spots, including the River Tay, at Glen Coe, Glen Torridon and Loch Katrine. His paintings were hugely popular with patrons who wished to celebrate the beauty of places they knew fondly from walking and shooting vacations and many Victorian billiard rooms and drawing rooms in the finer country houses boasted fine examples of his romantic landscapes. One of his paintings is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia in Sydney.

Breanski’s interest in light upon the landscape can be compared to that of John Atkinson Grimshaw, the two artists sharing the same ambition to glorify the British landscape, seen at its most beautiful. The most successful of Breanski’s works were, like those of Grimshaw, painted on clear summer or autumn evenings, when the crisp air is radiant with the gold of a wonderful sunset and the mountainsides of heather and bracken reflect the last defiance of light in hues of purple and russet. Rarely populated by more than a solitary angler or a herd of lazily ambling cattle or sheep, Breanski’s paintings capture a tranquil world of reflection and calm. The beauty of the glassy lochs and towering mountains swathed in glorious light, suggests both the eternity of the Highlands which have been unchanged for hundreds of years, simultaneously capturing the fleeting effects of light as it surrenders to the night when anglers, herdsmen and painters must retire to warm lodgings.