Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924)

Maurice Prendergast grew up in Boston and was essentially a self-taught artist. He went to Paris in 1891 and met James Wilson Morrice and a circle of British artists who put him in touch with avant-garde trends. These painters' perchant for street scenes coincided with Prendergast's fascination with the stylized forms, flattened perspectives, and bright colors of the Nabis (Maurice Denis, douard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard). These innovative artists and the Seurat retrospective held at the Salon des Indpendants in 1892 had a formidible influence on him. When he returned to Boston in the winter of 1894-1895, he had assimilated many Postimpressionist techniques and had developed a style in which discretely balanced color patches created prismatic and scintillating effects.

For a decade after his return to Boston he worked chiefly in watercolor. During the summer of 1896, Prendergast looked to the beaches and piers north of Boston for subject matter. He painted some of his most memorable images at a favorite site, Revere Beach. Scenes rich in anecdotal charm characterize this important series: a crisp white dress, a woman reclining with a parasol, a wisp of red sash, a ribboned hat.

In 1909, Prendergast was fifty-one years old and almost completely deaf. He returned to Europe to revive his spirits and renew his contact with French painting. Much was new, and much he cast aside. He drew from Paul Signac the Pointillist technique that that artist evolved from Georges Seurat. Noteworthy are a group of watercolors done in St. Malo in 1910. They differ radically from Prendergast's earlier, more realistic works. The drawing is freer, the value contrasts sharper, and the colors more brilliant. The brushwork is rectangular, reminiscent of the scientific Impressionism of Seurat but without its cold order or chromatic logic. His joy in the outdoors, especially the beaches of New England, were a constant theme and a reflection of his passion for the American shore.