Louise Catherine Breslau

Louise Catherine Breslau (6 December 1856 – 12 May 1927) was a German-born Swiss painter, who learned drawing to pass the time while bedridden with chronic asthma. She studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris, and exhibited at the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where she became a respected colleague of noted figures such as Edgar Degas and Anatole France. Biography Early years Born Maria Luise Katharina Breslau into an apparently-assimilated Munich-based German Jewish family of Polish Jewish descent. In 1858, when Breslau was two years old, her father accepted the position of professor and head physician of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Zurich, and the family moved to Switzerland. In December 1866, Dr. Breslau died suddenly from a staph infection contracted while performing a post-mortem examination. Suffering from asthma all her life, Breslau turned to drawing as a child to help pass the time while confined to her bed. She spent her childhood in Zurich, Switzerland, and as an adult made Paris her home where she also dropped "Maria", perhaps taking "Maria" as inappropriate for a Jew regardless of whether its use is for "Mariam" or "Mary". Lydia Escher (1858–1892) was a childhood friend of Louise Breslau in Zürich, and in her letters she told to take singing and piano lessons, and Lydia was inspired by the creative genius.