Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil

French archaeologist

• Born: February 28, 1877
• Birthplace: Mortain, France
• Died: August 14, 1961
• Place of death: L'Îsle-Adam, France

A major figure in prehistoric archaeology, Breuil specialized in prehistoric art, opening new vistas of understanding and establishing the first useful chronologies for this crucial facet of early human cultural activity. He is also known for his discovery, with two others, of the famous cave paintings at Lascaux in France in 1939.

Early Life

Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil (ahn-ree ay-dwahr prahs-pehr broy) came from a family with generations of deep ties to Normandy and northern France. His father practiced law in his hometown of Mortain, but when Henri was still an infant the family moved to Clermont de l’Oise, where his father had been appointed public prosecutor. Henri’s father was a stern, orderly individual, though not unkind. Throughout his life, Breuil remained more devoted to his mother, to whom he wrote nearly every week, regardless of where he was at the time.

At age ten, following elementary schooling in Clermont, Breuil went to the Collège Saint-Vincent in Senlis, run by Marist fathers. Breuil apparently was not in the best of health as a child and had difficult times with larger, more robust boys. He was also a rather solitary and deeply contemplative child. Breuil did not take well to the unimaginative rote-learning methods of the school, and he had to start in the lowest class. He spent much of his free time alone, walking in the forests and meadows around Senlis, where he developed a lifelong passion for the natural sciences, particularly entomology.

In 1894, Breuil passed his baccalaureate examinations, without any particular distinction except in the natural sciences. By this time, he was in such poor health that doctors prescribed an entire year of rest. During this period, Breuil began exploring the hundreds of caverns in the Somme country, where he heard tales of fossils and strange drawings to be found in some of the caves. He also briefly considered a career in medicine, as well as one as a missionary. Breuil’s twin avocations for science and theology led him to enroll in October, 1895, in the seminary at Issy-les-Moulineaux, in a suburb of Paris. There he was fortunate to encounter as an instructor the Abbé Guibert, an avid evolutionist and naturalist, who convinced Breuil that the priesthood and a scientific career were not incompatible. In particular, Guibert encouraged Breuil to turn his attention to the fascinating and controversial finds just beginning to sketch out the world of prehistory.

Life’s Work

Breuil was ordained a priest in June, 1900, and obtained a degree in natural sciences from the University of Paris in 1903. He was never to occupy a clerical post. With approval from the sympathetic bishop of Soissons, Breuil obtained an extended leave from religious duties to pursue research in prehistory. Already reputed to be an expert draftsman and artist, in 1901 Breuil got his first opportunity to investigate systematically and record prehistoric art at La Mouthe cave in the Dordogne, at the request of its discoverer, Émile Rivière.

Breuil’s unique blend of artistic talent and scientific rigor was useful for the study of prehistoric cave art. In the early twentieth century, photographic technology was not sophisticated enough to record the frequently enormous expanses of artwork on the walls of dimly lit or even pitch-black caves, work that often was in a terrible state of preservation. Breuil approached this grueling task with unbridled enthusiasm. Maneuvering himself through long, restricted passages of rough, damp rock, spending long hours in a crouch or on his back to render his copies, Breuil suddenly liberated himself from his chronic frail health.

Even Breuil, however, could not have foreseen the magnitude of the task. He had barely begun at La Mouthe when news came in September, 1901, of sensational discoveries in two caves in the Vézère Valley, each of which contained hundreds of meters of paintings. Among the paintings were hosts of animals either extinct or no longer found in Europe, a few depictions of humans, and groups of mysterious symbols. They were so extensive that there could no longer be serious doubt of their prehistoric origins, despite claims of detractors that they were forgeries, hoaxes, or simply modern renderings by unnamed hands. In 1902, Breuil, Rivière, and a team of French archaeologists, having examined La Mouthe and the Vézère Valley finds, officially declared them the work of prehistoric artists. No one, however, yet had any idea of the time period into which these works fell.

At the suggestion of colleagues, Breuil prepared for an expedition to examine the cave paintings at Altamira in Spain. These had been discovered as early as 1868, but after early excitement, dismissed as, at best, a few hundred years old. By 1890, Altamira had been forgotten by all but a few prehistorians. Breuil and a colleague, Émile Cartailhac, spent weeks at Altamira in painstaking copywork. With the environment too damp for water-color, Breuil retrained himself on the spot in pastels. In 1903, Breuil read two papers to scientific congresses testifying to the prehistoric authenticity of Altamira. Publication of his results in 1906 by the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris created a storm of controversy. Many were convinced, but opposition to the idea continued.

In 1906, Breuil commenced a five-year stint as lecturer in prehistory and ethnography at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, punctuated by numerous trips to France and Spain to explore more caves. In 1910, he became professor of prehistory at the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, expanding his lecture circuit to include all of Western Europe. Two years later came another sensational discovery of cave paintings in the Tuc d’Audoubert, near Toulouse on the river Volp. Breuil and his companions broke into a chamber unoccupied for millennia, covered with animal bones and human footprints. Tuc also revealed a clay bison, the first evidence of prehistoric sculpture in this medium.

During World War I, Breuil interrupted his scientific career to serve as an Allied intelligence agent in Spain. The work allowed Breuil many chances to explore more caves, and in 1916 associates excitedly called him back to Tuc d’Audoubert, where a narrow connection had been found leading to a whole new series of caverns. The new discovery, Trois-Frères, was a half-mile-long cavern covered with animals and humans in strange, ritual costumes, symbols of reproduction and sexuality, and even musical instruments. In numerous episodes during succeeding years, Breuil was to spend nearly a year in Trois-Frères copying the work. These reproductions are regarded as among the best executed and most significant of his career.

By the 1920’s, despite continued criticism, the sheer quantity of cave paintings, becoming ever more obvious because of Breuil’s artistic hand, decisively turned the academic tide. It was now possible for Breuil to distinguish artistic styles and motifs that clearly belonged to different periods of prehistory and, from there, to begin constructing prehistoric sequences and relating them to the other material remains, such as fossils and stone tools. Evolutionary change could be discerned in the paintings, indications of new concepts of the human relationship to the animal and spiritual world, the development of central elements in human consciousness. Although absolute dates were still a matter of speculation, it was clear that human prehistory in Europe covered tens of thousands of years.

Breuil began to climb rapidly in academic circles and soon acquired international renown. In 1926, he lectured on prehistory at Oxford, two years later became a professor at the Sorbonne, and in 1929 was appointed to the faculty of the Collège de France. During the 1930’s, he traveled extensively to prehistoric sites in Europe and made two visits to China, where scholars were just beginning to suspect that the antiquity of human occupation might even antedate that of Europe.

By chance, Breuil went to southern France to spend the winter of 1939-1940 with a colleague. Thus he escaped the German invasion of France and the fall of Paris in the spring of 1940. In September, 1939, two young boys brought Breuil some drawings they had made of animals on the walls of a cave they had discovered near Montignac, a small town on the Vézère. The place was barely accessible by a small hole and exceedingly dangerous, as Breuil discovered on entering. What he saw, however, dispelled any concern for safety. It was the fabulous art of Lascaux.

Even during World War II, Breuil’s sensational discovery stirred Vichy France. Sealed for thousands of years, Lascaux’s paintings, richly engraved, appeared almost as they had in Paleolithic times. Some scholars have speculated that the artists constructed scaffolding to reach the higher points of the vaulted roof. By 1940, Breuil’s artistic renderings were no longer needed; the wonders of Lascaux were photographed in breathtaking detail.

In 1941, Breuil was invited to take up a professorship at the University of Lisbon. Seizing the opportunity to get away from the war, he escaped once again, this time from the German occupation of southern France. In 1942, Breuil embarked on a three-year expedition to southern Africa. There good fortune followed him as he was able to locate animal bones that forced redating of an Australopithecine or early hominid site to more than one million years in of all places a jewelry store. He also examined South African rock paintings, including the famous White Lady of Tsisab in Southwest Africa.

Breuil returned to Africa in 1947 to attend the first Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, and again in 1951 for more exploration of sites. Now retired from the Collège de France, he nevertheless continued to write and do research. In the last decade of his life, as the work of Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey and other paleontologists began to come to light, it dawned on Breuil that southern and eastern Africa might well be the site of human origins, and that, for all the difficulty his generation faced in convincing skeptics that human prehistory spanned tens of thousands of years, the real saga might be far longer than even Breuil had once imagined. He died on August 14, 1961, in L’Îsle-Adam.

Significance

Breuil was a seminal figure in the emergence of the discipline of prehistory. He formulated a descriptive language for style and elaborated sequences and chronologies that became canons for the study of prehistoric art in the Old World. His academic training and incalculable physical labor allowed him to bring to light the achievements of Paleolithic culture as no other person could. As a scholar, his work was unsurpassed in the field.

Unlike many others, however, Breuil had the capacity, through his writing and his artistic talent, to transmit his discoveries to a fascinated public. His paintings and commentaries invited Europeans, Asians, and Africans to contemplate the genius of their forebears across hundreds of generations and thousands of years, and to balance the evidence against traditional religious and prescientific canons regarding human origins. In this respect, Breuil contributed mightily to the intellectual ferment of the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Aujoulat, Norbert. Lascaux: Movement, Space, and Time. New York: H. N. Abrams, 2005. A lively interpretation of the Lascaux cave painting by a geologist and scholar of prehistory. Well-illustrated, with updated photographs, maps, and explanatory diagrams. Recommended.

Brodrick, Alan Houghton. Father of Prehistory, the Abbé Henri Breuil: His Life and Times. New York: William Morrow, 1963. A somewhat rambling narrative biography composed by a personal friend that is obviously a labor of love. A chronology of Breuil’s life is included.

Burkitt, Miles Crawford. Prehistory: A Study of Early Cultures in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1971. Contains a preface by Breuil and is a useful summary of the state of prehistory after Breuil’s major cave art discoveries.

Leroi-Gourhan, André. The Art of Prehistoric Man in Western Europe. Translated by Norbert Guterman. London: Thames & Hudson, 1968. Leroi-Gourhan was instrumental in spreading word of Breuil’s discoveries to the English-speaking world. This work summarizes the state of knowledge at the time of publication with particular emphasis on the contributions of Breuil and his contemporaries.

Marshack, Alexander. The Roots of Civilization: The Cognitive Beginnings of Man’s First Art, Symbol, and Notation. Rev. ed. Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Moyer Bell, 1991. A groundbreaking, controversial synthesis of Paleolithic art and symbol, valuable not only for its imaginative hypotheses but also for extensive illustrations of cave paintings. Extensive bibliography.

Ruspoli, Mario. The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographs. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987. A poignant look at these famous paintings before the French government permanently closed Lascaux to the public to prevent further deterioration of the paintings from human atmospheric disturbance. Good bibliography on cave painting and preservation issues.