Beschreibung:

Maurice Brazil Prendergast American, 1858-1924 Venetian Courtyard, circa 1898 Signed Maurice Prendergast (lr); dated 1898 on the verso Watercolor and pencil on paper 15 3/8 x 7 1/4 inches Provenance: The artist Charles Prendergast the artist's brother, 1924 Lillian Travis, circa 1935 By descent in the family Kraushaar Galleries Inc., New York [Spanierman Gallery, New York] Mr. and Mrs. William Berger, Denver, CO [Sale: Christie's, New York, Nov. 29, 2000, , illus.] Private collection Literature: Carol Clark, Nancy Mowll Mathews and Gwendolyn Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast Charles Prendergast A Catalogue Raisonne (Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990), no. 715, p. 387, illus. Nancy Mowll Mathews and Elizabeth Kennedy, Prendergast in Italy (London: Merrell, 2009), p.174, no. 715, illus. (as Italian Courtyard) Perhaps the first truly modern American artist, Maurice Brazil Prendergast created a world both charming and sophisticated. His kaleidoscopic view of the pleasures of city leisure--the parade of strollers in the park, the bustle of shoppers along the streets, the holiday atmosphere of summer outings at the beach--belies deeper artistic concerns, as Prendergast, a retiring and unassuming Bostonian, resolutely pioneered a new direction in American art. Born in St. John's, Newfoundland, Prendergast moved to Boston with his family in 1861. By his early twenties, the young man was apprenticed to a card painter, to which he attributed his life-long interest in flat, boldly-colored patterns and lettering. In 1891, Prendergast traveled to Paris, where he studied and painted for the next four years. His Parisian watercolors focus on the city's cosmopolitan splendors, and invoke the fetes champetres of Watteau and the idylls in French parks by Manet, Monet and Renoir. Unlike these artists, however, Prendergast's technique assimilated the latest advances by Post-Impressionists including Gauguin, Vuillard and the Nabis. This second group of artists revolted against fidelity to nature by permitting artistic expression to dominate subject matter, and their innovations liberated Prendergast from a strictly representational approach in his watercolors. He would replace nature with his own imagination, painting whimsical patterns in bold colors. During the next twenty years, Prendergast spent time in Boston, Venice and Paris, where he continued to develop his watercolor technique. During the late 1890s, he began exhibiting at the New York Watercolor Club, and by 1900, had his first one-man show at Macbeth Gallery. In 1908, he participated in the exhibition of The Eight, also at Macbeth, and several years later, had seven of his paintings included in the pivotal 1913 Armory Show. In 1898, Prendergast traveled to Italy, where he stayed almost a year and a half. During this time, he spent almost a year in Venice itself, painting the spectacle of modern life. The present work captures a scene of everyday Venice, executed in the artist's characteristic use of patterned color and flattened space. With its foreshortened view of canal water and steps leading into the courtyard, Prendergast creates the illusion that the viewer is glimpsing a private moment while floating by in a gondola. This impression is further emphasized by the small girl who looks directly out at the viewer. Patterned patches of pure color articulate the hanging laundry, which echo the long, thin shapes of the building's shutters. The exaggerated vertical format of the paper accentuates the narrowness of the alley and increases the sense of the courtyard as a private space. C
Paper toned . Hinged to the mount with clear tape at upper right and upper left. Small areas of glue residue at lower left, center left , upper left and upper right. Residual paper tape on the back, running several inches along the central section of the left and the right edges.