Country Lane, Rockport

Details

MAURICE BRAZIL PRENDERGAST (1859-1924)
Country Lane, Rockport
signed 'Prendergast' (lower right)
watercolor and pastel on paper
14 x 20 in. (35.6 x 50.8 cm.)
Executed circa 1920-23.

Provenance

The artist.
Charles Prendergast, Westport, Connecticut, brother of the above, 1924.
Eugenie Prendergast, by descent from the above, 1948.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1972.
Jules Brassner, 1980.
Denise and Herbert N. Somekh, Great Neck, New York, by 1982.
John H. Surovek Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida.
Spanierman Gallery, New York.
The Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, acquired from the above, 1984.
Christie's, New York, 26 May 1999, lot 74, sold by the above.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature

C. Clark, N.M. Mathews and G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 532, no. 1334, illustrated.

Exhibited

Roslyn, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, The Long Island Collections, A Century of Art: 1880-1980, April 20-July 18, 1982, pp. 38, 60, illustrated.
Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, The Shock of Modernism in America: The Eight and Artists of the Armory Show, April 29-July 29, 1984, p. 93, fig. 156, illustrated.
Jacksonville, Florida, Cummer Gallery of Art, American Favorites from the Warner Collection of the Gulf States Paper Corporation and the David Warner Foundation, September 14-November 11, 1984.
South Bend, Indiana, South Bend Art Center, American Masterpieces from the Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, December 9, 1989-February 4, 1990.
Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Impressions of America: The Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, June-July 1991.
Richmond, Virginia, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, American Dreams: Paintings and Decorative Arts from the Warner Collection, September 20, 1997-January 25, 1998.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

Painted circa 1920-1923, Country Lane Rockport exhibits Prendergast's predilection for capturing glimpses of picturesque crowds leisurely strolling through tranquil New England towns. After his final travels abroad in 1914, Prendergast frequently summered in locales including Annisquam, Gloucester and Westport among others, taking his surroundings as his primary subject. The present work depicts a cheerful scene in Rockport, Massachusetts, executed with the artist's signature mosaic-like brushwork and bold coloration. Of Prendergast's output of this period, Milton W. Brown explains, "The brushstrokes become larger and bolder, and they take on an abstract quality apart from the underlying forms they are supposed to define, moving in independent directions, and varying in size and shape. But, while obscuring and overriding those forms, they succeed in unifying the pictorial surface" ("Maurice B. Prendergast," in C. Clark, N.M. Matthews and G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast and Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 22)

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