MAURICE BRAZIL PRENDERGAST (American 1858-1924)

Description

MAURICE BRAZIL PRENDERGAST (American 1858-1924)
Public Gardens, Boston, c. 1900-1901
Watercolor on paper
10.25in. x 18.5in.
Signed lower right: Prendergast
Coe Kerr Gallery label on verso, Smithsonian Institute of Traveling Exhibition label on verso
Provenance: The artist; to Charles Prendergast, 1924; to Mrs. Charles Prendergast, 1948; to Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, 1986; private collection
Exhibited: Detroit Museum of Art, 1901, no. 18; Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition (SITES) American Impressionism, 1982-1983; Musée du Petit Palace, Paris; National Gallery, Berlin; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Art Museum, Bucharest; National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria. No.29; illustrated
Literature: Carol Clark, Nancy Mowll Mathews, and Gwendolny Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast and Charles Prendergast, A Catalogue Raisonné (Williamstown, MA: Williams College of Art, 1990) cat. no. 770, illustrated p 405.

Maurice Brazil Prendergast was America's leading painter of modernist art best known for his scenes of the urban leisure-class enjoying themselves in city parks and beach settings. In 1899 Prendergast returned to the Boston area after he spent a year and a half in Italy and his paintings soon gained recognition and national acclaim. Around 1900 he was given a one-man show at Macbeth Gallery, New York City. In 1901 he exhibited a painting that won a bronze medal at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. That same year, Prendergast had retrospective exhibitions at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Detroit Art Museum, where the present painting, Public Garden, Boston, was exhibited.

During the early 1900s, he produced some of his most celebrated paintings, including West Church, Boston (The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Courtyard, West End Library (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Prendergast's paintings from this period mark the beginning of his personal style. These works, including Public Gardens, Boston, were done mostly in watercolor and depict Boston, its parks and neighboring beaches.

Public Garden, Boston, depicts the fountain sculpture of Venus, the garden's first public art, which no longer exists today. Characteristic of this period, his watercolors are loose, simplified forms painted in light, transparent hues.

Prendergast was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, and while a boy his family moved to Boston around 1863. Upon completion of grammar school, Prendergast apprenticed for a card shop where he learned graphic design. From 1891 to 1894, he studied art formally in Paris at the Académies Colarossi and Julian. Through his friendship with James Wilson Morrice, be became familiar with cutting edge art movements Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and Nabis painting that combined abstraction and naive art. In 1894, Prendergast returned to the Boston. He returned to Europe in 1907 and worked in St. Malo where his colorful scenes entered his fauvist style. His paintings were included in the 1908 exhibition of The Eight, whose members included George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Everett Shinn, and Arthur B. Davies. Following the Armory show of 1913, Prendergast moved to New York City. His paintings are housed in many major museums around the world. His brother, Charles Prendergast was also an artist. Condition: .5in. x 1in. repair lower left corner, otherwise appears to be in excellent condition. Framed under den glass.

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