Abbé Henri Breuil

(28-FEB-1887 - 1961)

**Abbé Breuil** around 1900. Public Domain.

**Abbé Breuil** smoking, 1950s. Public Domain.

Cueva del Castillo, 23 July 1909, Abbé **Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil** (in cassock), **Hugo Obermaier** (background), **Hermilio Alcalde del Río** (centre with hat in hand) and **Albert I of Monaco** (seated on the right). Public Domain.

Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil was a cleric by profession, but archaeologist and paleontologist by destiny. Although he was a catholic priest and stayed a priest until he died, he never practised his profession. He is normally called Abbé Breuil, abbé is the French word for abbot, but is also used as a respectful form of address for priests. Sometimes he was called the pope of prehistory or the nestor of prehistory.

During most of his lifetime, Abbé Breuil was considered the foremost authority on Paleolithic cave art. He explored numerous caves in Europe and Africa, but most of them in France and northern Spain. His fame based very much on his publications, as he copied and published hundreds of examples of rock carvings and paintings. He wrote well-informed interpretations of the significance of prehistoric art.

His principal work is Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art (1952).

Biography

28-FEB-1877	born in Mortain, Manche, Normandy, France.
1901	Breuil sees his first Paleolithic art at Les Combarelles.
1903	was invited by Emile Cartailhac to visit Altamira and started making copies of the paintings.
1910	started to teach at the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Paris.
1918	excavated a nearly complete skeletton of a Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis.
1929 to 1947	teaching position as Chairman of Prehistory at the Collège de France.
1938	becomes a member of the Institut de France.
1940	called in to investigate a newly discovered cave in south-central France at Lascaux.
1947	visited rock art sites in Namibia.
1948	visited rock art sites in Namibia.
1950	visited rock art sites in Namibia.
14-AUG-1961	dies in L'Isle-Adam, Val-d'Oise, France.

Bibliography

Henri Breuil, Emile Cartailhac (1906): La Caverne d'Altamina, .
Henri Breuil, M.C. Burkitt, Montagu Pollock (1928): Rock Paintings of Southern Andalusia: A Description of a Neolithic and Copper Age Art Group, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928.
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Henri Breuil (1933): Les Peintures ruprestres schematiques de la Peninsule Iberique, ()
Henri Breuil, Hugo Obermaier (1935): The Cave of Altamira at Santillana del Mar, Spain, Madrid, 1935. ()
Henri Breuil (1949): Beyond the Bounds of History, Scenes from the Old Stone Age. English Translation by Mary E. Boyle. ()
Henri Breuil (1952): Les figures incisees et ponctuees de la grotte de Kiantapo (Katanga), Tervuren, 18 x 27 cm 55 pp. soft cover illustrated. ()
Henri Breuil (1952): Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art, Montignac, Dordogne, 1952.
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Henri Breuil, Mary E. Boyle, E.R. Scherz (1955): The White Lady of the Brandberg, London: Faber and Faber; New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1955. ()
Henri Breuil, Raymond Lantier (1959): Les hommes de la Pierre Ancienne, (Paleolithique et mesolithique). Nouvelle edition revue et augmentee. Paris, Payot 1959. 360 pp. ()
Henri Breuil (1965): The Men of the Old Stone Age, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965. ()
Henri Breuil (1966): Les roches peintes de la Rhodesie du Sud, Les environs de Fort Victoria et d'autres sites, Publications de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Realisations des Editions Trianon, 1966, pt in-folio, 124 pp. ()