01907 Summer 2022

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SUMMER 2022 | 25
The Legacy of Lydia
BY JAKOB MENENDEZ
If you were to pull out your phone
or computer and Google the name
Lydia Breed, the first thing that
would populate on your screen would be
an amalgamation of photos of strange
looking dogs.
If you scroll a little further down the
page, you might see an obituary describing
a woman who was born in Lynn, but
mainly resided in Swampscott. You might
even learn a little bit about her life and
legacy from the Lynn Museum’s website if
you dug deep enough.
But, what you won’t see, and what you
likely may have never seen until reading
this article, is the beautiful world of colors
and lines that Lydia Breed created in her
lifetime as a printmaker in Swampscott.
Landscapes, religious depictions,
expressions of activism, Lydia did them all
with a distinct stroke that would come to
define the era of art in Boston during the
1950s.
“Lydia was part of a movement
in Boston. By the 1940s, Boston was
starting to have a voice in the Art
History landscape,” said Renee Covalucci,
the current president of The Boston
Printmakers.
“New York went completely abstract
and Boston stayed with subject matters,
figuration, and there was a group called
the Boston Figurative expressionists.
Lydia followed the philosophy of them
pretty purely in the way she develops
her prints. She abstracts them a little …
she adds emotion, she adds tension, she
adds expressive elements that make it feel
like it sparkles. She really represents that
philosophy really well.”
Born in September 1925, Lydia
would enter a family of dynasty status,
as a distant relative of Allen Breed who
helped settle Lynn when he sailed across
the Atlantic Ocean in 1630. Like those
before her, Lydia would go on to live a
life of service to her communities as an
Lydia Breed's woodcut titled, Beethoven and
Bruckner, circa 1964.
PHOTO: LYNN MUSEUM