Beach Scene by Maurice Brazil Prendergast

Maurice Brazil Prendergast
1858-1924 | American

Beach Scene

Signed "Prendergast" (lower right)
Inscribed "No 13/"Study" St Malo/Maurice Prendergast" (en verso)
Oil on panel

Maurice Brazil Prendergast is regarded among the most significant turn-of-the-century American painters, helping to herald in the modern art movement in the United States. This beach scene is exemplary of the artist's unique watercolor style, which captures the spectacle and unique lightheartedness of modern America. Like the French Impressionists who influenced him from Cezanne to Signac, Prendergast turned to everyday life for his inspiration, visiting verdant parks and crowded beaches such as this one to create works that were entirely modern in both their subject matter and their style.

Prendergast is renowned for his colorful recreational scenes such as this, which features a group of figures relaxing in the eponymous town along the Brittany coast. Billowing clouds and distant mountains are formed by painterly strokes of pastel blues, yellows, reds and whites, and the harbor is dotted with passing ships. Groups of women gather on the beach, enjoying their leisure time by taking in the tranquil vista. The color scheme is applied in bold, fluid brushstrokes with varying degrees of translucency and a freedom of expression that places him firmly at the crossroads between American Impressionism and early 20th-century modern art.

Born in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1859, Prendergast was the eldest son of Maurice Prendergast, a local shopkeeper, and Mary Malvina Germaine, the daughter of a Boston physician. He decided to become an artist at a young age, and by 1879, he was working as a painter of show cards at the Boston firm of J.P. Marshall. It was during this period he was first introduced to watercolor painting, a medium which he would use throughout his career. From 1887 until 1891, Prendergast lived in Paris, studying at the Academies Julian and Colarossi. It was during that time that he encountered the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, while also learning to paint outdoors.

He eventually settled in Boston, where he embarked on his career as a commercial and fine artist. In 1908, he participated in an exhibition at Macbeth Galleries that marked the beginning of the movement known as The Eight, which included the realist painters Henri, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn and John Sloan, as well as the Impressionists Ernest Lawson and Arthur B. Davies. By that time one of the most significant practitioners of modernism in the United States, he also helped organize the landmark Armory Show held in New York in 1913. One year later, Prendergast settled there permanently, going on to exhibit his work at venues such as the Carroll Galleries, the Montross Gallery, the Society of Independent Artists and the Brummer Gallery. Today, his highly celebrated works can be found in important public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York as well as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., and many others.

Circa 1907

Panel: 10 1/2" high x 13 3/4" wide
Frame: 16 1/4" high x 19 1/2" wide x 2" deep

Exhibitions:
Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, An Exhibition of Paintings by Arthur B. Davies, William J. Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawon, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, March 7 - 29, 1908, no. 13 (possibly)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Buffalo, New York
Private Collection, Siesta Key, Florida
Private Collection of Angie Burnham, Boulder, Colorado, by 1975
M.S. Rau, New Orleans