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拍品專文
Nantasket is among the finest examples of Maurice Brazil Prendergast's unique watercolor style, celebrating the pageantry and modernity of public life at the turn of the century. Like the Impressionists in Paris, where he studied from 1891 to 1894, Prendergast took his primary inspiration from daily life, using crowded beaches, parks, busy sidewalks and squares to create paintings that are modern both in style and in subject.
Nancy Mathews writes, "But few artists were so well suited to capture this moment in the history of American culture as Maurice Prendergast. His talent and personality drew him to the kind of experiences turn-of-the-century leisure offered: the colorful jostling of holiday crowds, the experience of nature mediated by parasol and windswept banner, and the lowering of class and gender barriers to foster a sense of inclusiveness--however fleeting...True to his age, leisure became the great theme of Prendergast's art. Over time, attitudes and values changed, but he never lost his reverence for a subject that he felt made people more civilized and more human. Nor did he forget that art itself was a leisure-time spectacle." (The Art of Leisure: Maurice Prendergast in the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1999, pp.15-6) Nantasket demonstrates the artist's fascination with everyday activities of the leisure class while simultaneously exhibiting a Modernist approach to painting.
In his earliest watercolor phase, Prendergast looked to New England's parks and beaches for holiday and leisure subjects. Between 1900 and 1905, Nantasket, on the south shore of Massachusetts and the beaches around it were Prendergast's favorites and he painted it in numerous versions during these years, all sharing the sense of spontaneity and lightness that became the hallmarks of his work. Ladies with parasols strolling along the shoreline and leisurely lounging were among his preferred subjects, as were children frolicking in the sand and surf. In Nantasket, Prendergast captures a vibrant scene, depicting children and women with parasols, climbing along the rocks of Nantasket Beach.
Nantasket illustrates Prendergast's particular approach to composition, color and brushwork. Keenly aware of the Post-Impressionist's aesthetic attitudes of composition and space, Prendergast used an array of devices to emphasize the flatness of the surface, which in turn heightened the overall decorative effect. In addition to the purposeful arrangement of composition, Nantasket is enhanced by the powerful use of color and a bold display of brushwork. The artist elects to use a more arbitrary choice of color and defines his palette locally. The varied neutral washes of the rocks create a backdrop from which emerges a resplendent display of contrasting, yet harmonizing color, using his typical color scheme of reds, blues, pinks and yellows to add to the bustle of activity.
This color scheme is applied in thin, fluid brushstrokes. Prendergast's brushwork "takes on an abstract quality apart from the underlying forms they are suppose 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." (M. Brown in C. Clark, N. Mathews, G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 22) In Nantasket, these variations in brushwork and color are freely expressed and enhance the textural quality and pattern of the work.
Illustrating the artist's lifelong interest in observing urbanity at rest, Nantasket, is a wonderful example of Prendergast's passion for color and composition, capturing his impression of a sun-filled day at Nantasket Beach.
Nancy Mathews writes, "But few artists were so well suited to capture this moment in the history of American culture as Maurice Prendergast. His talent and personality drew him to the kind of experiences turn-of-the-century leisure offered: the colorful jostling of holiday crowds, the experience of nature mediated by parasol and windswept banner, and the lowering of class and gender barriers to foster a sense of inclusiveness--however fleeting...True to his age, leisure became the great theme of Prendergast's art. Over time, attitudes and values changed, but he never lost his reverence for a subject that he felt made people more civilized and more human. Nor did he forget that art itself was a leisure-time spectacle." (The Art of Leisure: Maurice Prendergast in the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1999, pp.15-6) Nantasket demonstrates the artist's fascination with everyday activities of the leisure class while simultaneously exhibiting a Modernist approach to painting.
In his earliest watercolor phase, Prendergast looked to New England's parks and beaches for holiday and leisure subjects. Between 1900 and 1905, Nantasket, on the south shore of Massachusetts and the beaches around it were Prendergast's favorites and he painted it in numerous versions during these years, all sharing the sense of spontaneity and lightness that became the hallmarks of his work. Ladies with parasols strolling along the shoreline and leisurely lounging were among his preferred subjects, as were children frolicking in the sand and surf. In Nantasket, Prendergast captures a vibrant scene, depicting children and women with parasols, climbing along the rocks of Nantasket Beach.
Nantasket illustrates Prendergast's particular approach to composition, color and brushwork. Keenly aware of the Post-Impressionist's aesthetic attitudes of composition and space, Prendergast used an array of devices to emphasize the flatness of the surface, which in turn heightened the overall decorative effect. In addition to the purposeful arrangement of composition, Nantasket is enhanced by the powerful use of color and a bold display of brushwork. The artist elects to use a more arbitrary choice of color and defines his palette locally. The varied neutral washes of the rocks create a backdrop from which emerges a resplendent display of contrasting, yet harmonizing color, using his typical color scheme of reds, blues, pinks and yellows to add to the bustle of activity.
This color scheme is applied in thin, fluid brushstrokes. Prendergast's brushwork "takes on an abstract quality apart from the underlying forms they are suppose 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." (M. Brown in C. Clark, N. Mathews, G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 22) In Nantasket, these variations in brushwork and color are freely expressed and enhance the textural quality and pattern of the work.
Illustrating the artist's lifelong interest in observing urbanity at rest, Nantasket, is a wonderful example of Prendergast's passion for color and composition, capturing his impression of a sun-filled day at Nantasket Beach.