Full Name: Breckenridge, James Douglas
Other Names:
- James Douglas Breckenridge
- James D. Breckenridge
- James Breckenridge
Gender: male
Date Born: 08 August 1926
Date Died: 18 December 1982
Place Born: New York, NY, USA
Place Died: Chicago, Cook, IL, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Late Antique and Medieval (European)
Career(s): art historians, curators, and educators
Overview
Art historian of late antique and medieval art, focusing on antique portraiture and numismatic motifs; museum curator; founder of the Midwest Art History Society. Breckenridge was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Clarence E. Breckenridge, a mechanic engineer, and Erna Gritschke (Breckenridge).
In 1945, he earned a B.A. with distinction in fine arts from Cornell University. He went on to Princeton University and received an M.F.A with honors in 1949. In the same year, he married his first wife Charlotte Zoe Thomas. In 1950, he received a Fulbright grant to study in Paris for a year. While in Paris, Breckenridge attended the seminar of Andre Grabar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. Upon his return to the States, he worked successively as a curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1952-1955) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (1955-1960). While working at these art museums, Breckenridge remained active in academia. He returned to Princeton to further doctoral studies.
Meanwhile, he taught art at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, as a visiting lecturer in 1954. He earned a Ph.D. degree in 1957 with a dissertation The Numismatic Iconography of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II. Initially, his dissertation was written under Albert M. Friend, Jr., and later Kurt Weitzmann when Friend’s health was failing. His dissertation was later published by the American Numismatic Society as a book in 1959.
He was a lecturer in art at Johns Hopkins University (1957-1959), a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (1959-1960), and a visiting Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Pittsburgh (1960-1961). In 1961, Breckenridge joined the art faculty of Northwestern University as an Associate Professor of Art. In 1964, a year after he divorced, Breckenridge married Dorte Ulrich. He was promoted to Professor in 1966, and in 1968, his book Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture was published. in 1973, he was made Professor of Art History, which he held until his death. Meanwhile, he founded the Midwest Art History Society in 1973. He was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Research at Princeton(1974-1975) and served as its President from 1977 to 1980. In 1981, he received a second Fulbright grant to study in Bulgaria for a year. He died on Dec. 18, 1982, in Chicago.
“Although a specialist in religious art and the art and architecture of Rome, Byzantium, and the Middle Ages, Breckenridge taught, lectured, and wrote on a wide variety of topics in art history. His publications centered on antique portraiture and numismatic motifs.” (Northwestern University Archive)
Selected Bibliography
- “Christ on the Lyre-Backed Throne.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980): 247–60.
- “Christian Funerary Portraits in Mosaic.” Gesta 13, no. 2 (1974): 29–43.
- “‘Et Prima Vidit’: The Iconography of the Appearance of Christ to His Mother.” The Art Bulletin 39, no. 1 (1957): 9–32.
- Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968.
- “Treasures from Medieval France at Cleveland.” The Burlington Magazine 109, no. 773 (1967): 465–71.
- The Numismatic Iconography of Justinian II (685-695, 705-711 A.D.). New York: 1959.
Sources
- KRG, 73; KMP, 60 n. 130
- “Ancestry.Com – 1940 United States Federal Census.” n.d. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2442/images/m-t0627-02316-00440?ssrc=&backlabel=Return&pId=134353204.
- Northwestern University Archive: “Breckenridge, James D. (James Douglas), 1926-1982 | Archival and Manuscript Collections.” n.d. https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/agents/people/1910.
- “James Douglas Breckenridge (1926–1982) • FamilySearch.” n.d. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/KC1M-J76/james-douglas-breckenridge-1926-1982.
Archives
- James D. Breckenridge (1926-1982) Papers, Northwestern University Archives. https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/repositories/6/resources/423, 11/3/4/3.
Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang