(1880–1933)
Rae Sloan Bredin was the son of the artist and teacher Christine Sloan Bredin. Born in Butler, Pennsylvania, he first studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, until 1899. He subsequently studied with William Merritt Chase and Frank Vincent DuMond from 1900 to 1902 at the New York School of Art, where he met future New Hope painters Charles Rosen and Robert Spencer. He concluded his artistic education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. After traveling to France in 1914, he settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he became a leading painter of the art colony. Bredin lived in the artist Morgan Colt’s former studio near the Rabbit Run Bridge and painted landscapes, murals, and portraits.
As an accomplished figure painter and a sensitive landscapist, Bredin was well suited to synthesize the two genres. His most successful works in this vein place monumental female figures that resemble those of Frederick Frieseke within decorative landscapes akin to Daniel Garber’s.
Bredin exhibited at the National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery biennials, Salmagundi Club, National Arts Club, Art Club of Philadelphia, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915, and the Sesquicentennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 1926. He also contributed several paintings to the Exhibition of the New Hope Group of Painters, which toured the country in 1916-17. He was an associate of the National Academy of Design and a member of the Allied Artists of America, Salmagundi Club, International Society of Arts & Letters, National Arts Club, National Association of Portrait Painters, Rochester Art Club, Philadelphia Sketch Club, Art Alliance of Philadelphia, and the Art Club of Philadelphia. He taught at the New York School of Fine Arts, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia School of Design for Women, Holmquist School for Girls, New Hope, University of Virginia, and with William Merritt Chase at the Shinnecock Summer School of Art, Long Island, New York. Bredin also took over Chase’s master classes at the Manhattan Art School after his death in 1916. Bredin’s work can be found in the collections of the Salmagundi Club, New York; New Jersey State Museum, Trenton; Art Club of Philadelphia, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; and the Minneapolis Art Society.
