Emmy Leuze-Hirschfeld was a Viennese artist born in 1884. A student at the School of Fine Arts in Vienna, she left her native Austria to settle in Concarneau in 1905, where she became part of the community of foreign artists who had immigrated to Brittany. In 1906 she met Emil Benediktoff Hirschfeld (1867-1922), a painter of Ukrainian origin, whom she married a year later. During her lifetime, Emmy Leuze-Hirschfeld took part in several exhibitions in Brittany and Paris, where she exhibited her work from 1908 to 1931 at the Salon des artistes français.
Leuze-Hirschfeld’s artistic activity provides us with information about her career, about which little is known. A member of the Union artistique de Concarneau et de Quimper, the painter devoted much of her life to depicting Brittany, painting numerous lively landscapes and portraits featuring almost exclusively women. A more limited part of her output bears witness to several trips, notably to Spain and North Africa, where the artist painted
landscapes.
Emmy Leuze-Hirschfeld’s little-known work was recently highlighted in the exhibition Femmes artistes en Bretagne (1850-1950), organised by the Musée du Faouët in 2013.