Beschreibung:

Maurice Brazil Prendergast (American, 1858-1924) Donkey Rider, alternately titled On the Beach c. 1920-23. Signed "Prendergast" l.r. Watercolor on paper, 9 x 12 in. (22.8 x 30.3 cm), framed. Condition: Acid burn, gentle toning, subtle staining, some areas of thinning to sheet in u.r. quadrant, tack holes to each corner, hinged to back mat in two places on the top edge of the reverse. Provenance: From the artist to his brother Charles; to Hamilton Basso, 1946; to Etolia Basso; to Private Collection, 1984; Christie's New York, September 23, 1992 Lot 135; through to the current owner by family descent. Literature: Carol Clark, N.M. Mathews, and G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast Charles Prendergast A Catalogue Raisonné (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Williams College Museum of Art, 1990), cat. no. 1376 (titled Donkey Rider), p. 541 (illus.). N.B. Maurice Prendergast was born in Newfoundland, but he grew up in Boston where his family moved in 1868. The young artist was untrained, gaining an early familiarity and facility with watercolor when he served as an assistant to a poster painter. Prendergast would continue to work in watercolor throughout his life, expanding his mediums to include works in oil after about 1915 and creating many monotypes between 1892 and 1905. After trips to England and the continent in the 1880s, Prendergast began to develop a style based on avant-garde European trends. He received formal instruction in painting between 1891 and 1894, studying in Paris at the Atelier Colarossi and the Academie Julian. He became familiar with contemporary French painters, especially the Symbolists and the Nabis, whose paintings combined abstraction and naive art, and, in the hands of artists like Bonnard and Vuillard, delighted in the play of patterned surfaces. He returned to Paris in 1907 where he was introduced to the works of Henri Matisse and other Fauve artists whose style and palette would be an inspiration throughout Prendergast's career. In 1908 Prendergast joined in the forming of The Eight, who rejected the structure of the academies in favor of a fresher approach focusing on urban scenes. While Henri, Sloan, and Shinn explored the slums, tenements, and burlesque theaters of New York, Prendergast preferred to paint the leisure activities of the middle and upper classes. He also loved the seaside and the festivity of ocean resorts. He often painted crowds in scenes of parks and beaches, the pursuits of the various individuals subservient to the overall decorative style, with daubs of color arranged in scintillating patterns and flattened forms emphasizing bold contours.