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Lot Essay
The Stony Beach 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 and parks and busy sidewalks and squares to create paintings modern both in style and in subject. Nancy Matthews 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." (The Art of Leisure: Maurice Prendergast in the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1999, p.15)
In his earliest watercolor phase of 1896 to 1898, Prendergast looked to New England's parks and beaches for holiday and leisure subjects. Although the present work has long been called The Stony Beach, Ogunquit, Carol Clark, Nancy Matthews and Gwendolyn Owens propose that it most likely shows the pier at Nahant, Massachusetts. (Maurice Brazil Prendergast and Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 651) The beach at Nahant was one of 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 lounging leisurely were among his preferred subjects, as were children frolicking in the sand and surf.
Prendergast's early watercolors mark the beginning of his personal style. It is in these works that he develops techniques to emphasize a surface pattern of transparent brushstrokes in bold colors, and to use composition to emphasize the inherent flatness of the support. Richard J. Wattenmaker has written: "In The Stony Beach, c. 1897, Prendergast took a step in a new direction, from the predominant daintiness of previous watercolors to a large-scale color ensemble of both delicacy and power, in which the irregular patterns of rocks, figures, umbrellas, water, and sky are interspersed and tilted like a page from a Persian miniature. Prendergast left pencil notations visible throughout the sheet in a manner similar to the added pencil and scratched-out markings that indicate in a generalized fashion the units in his monotypes. The flattened mustard-colored proscenium across the foreground sets up a recession into space composed of stones of slightly varying chromatic shades of orange and tan, which dominate the left half of the composition. On a mottled gray rock, a tall woman in white, wearing a flowered bonnet and holding a russet umbrella with its ribs clearly defined, is silhouetted against orange and brown boulders. On the right side of the composition, figures seen from the front and back, standing, sitting, bending, three carrying parasols, are massed and balanced against the white figure and the boulders. The pattern of the three parasols seen from different angles create a broad diagonal recession that creates a link with the red shack on the pier and its multicolored red and blue reflections in the water. The corresponding half of this broad crisscross moves from lower left to the blotted pale orange sailboat in the top right corner. The hub of this crisscrossed X in space is the round orange umbrella seen near the center of the composition. It is this hub that permits the warm foreground and the cool distant colors to open into the depth of space so effectively while at the same time retaining the two-dimensional miniature pattern over the surface that zigzags along the diagonals. Tiny pristine figures at the water's edge and on the pier beyond fill the surface with sparkling reverberations of the top border of the horizontal foreground pattern. While these shapes establish the recession into space along these lines, they set up a frame for the diverse illustrative incidents to occur in a tranquil, impersonal drama." (Maurice Prendergast, New York, 1994, pp. 40-41)
By the end of the nineteenth century Prendergast had been exhibiting regularly in Boston and was beginning to establish his reputation as one of Boston's most highly acclaimed artists. His watercolors charmed the public and the critics alike, inspiring general praise. After concurrent 1897 exhibitions of his watercolors the Sunday Journal exclaimed "The works by Maurice B. Prendergast, both at the Art Club and Jordan Gallery are 'the rage of the town,' and well they may be reckoned." (as quoted in Maurice Brazil Prendergast and Charles Prendergast, A Catalogue Raisonné, p. 60) He was selling works and found eager patrons in Boston and other cities, and in 1898 embarked on his first trip to Italy.
"Stony Beach, identified in the Pan American Exposition catalogue as being Ogunquit, Maine, exemplifies the culmination of Prendergast's virtuoso watercolor style of 1896 to 1902. Little can be added to the standard approbations of the watercolor critics' vocabulary--sparkling, scintillating, effervescent--which have been applied to the painting ever since it received the Bronze medal in 1901." ( E. Green in Maurice Prendergast: Art of Impulse and Color, College Park, Maryland, 1976, pp. 107-108)
In his earliest watercolor phase of 1896 to 1898, Prendergast looked to New England's parks and beaches for holiday and leisure subjects. Although the present work has long been called The Stony Beach, Ogunquit, Carol Clark, Nancy Matthews and Gwendolyn Owens propose that it most likely shows the pier at Nahant, Massachusetts. (Maurice Brazil Prendergast and Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 651) The beach at Nahant was one of 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 lounging leisurely were among his preferred subjects, as were children frolicking in the sand and surf.
Prendergast's early watercolors mark the beginning of his personal style. It is in these works that he develops techniques to emphasize a surface pattern of transparent brushstrokes in bold colors, and to use composition to emphasize the inherent flatness of the support. Richard J. Wattenmaker has written: "In The Stony Beach, c. 1897, Prendergast took a step in a new direction, from the predominant daintiness of previous watercolors to a large-scale color ensemble of both delicacy and power, in which the irregular patterns of rocks, figures, umbrellas, water, and sky are interspersed and tilted like a page from a Persian miniature. Prendergast left pencil notations visible throughout the sheet in a manner similar to the added pencil and scratched-out markings that indicate in a generalized fashion the units in his monotypes. The flattened mustard-colored proscenium across the foreground sets up a recession into space composed of stones of slightly varying chromatic shades of orange and tan, which dominate the left half of the composition. On a mottled gray rock, a tall woman in white, wearing a flowered bonnet and holding a russet umbrella with its ribs clearly defined, is silhouetted against orange and brown boulders. On the right side of the composition, figures seen from the front and back, standing, sitting, bending, three carrying parasols, are massed and balanced against the white figure and the boulders. The pattern of the three parasols seen from different angles create a broad diagonal recession that creates a link with the red shack on the pier and its multicolored red and blue reflections in the water. The corresponding half of this broad crisscross moves from lower left to the blotted pale orange sailboat in the top right corner. The hub of this crisscrossed X in space is the round orange umbrella seen near the center of the composition. It is this hub that permits the warm foreground and the cool distant colors to open into the depth of space so effectively while at the same time retaining the two-dimensional miniature pattern over the surface that zigzags along the diagonals. Tiny pristine figures at the water's edge and on the pier beyond fill the surface with sparkling reverberations of the top border of the horizontal foreground pattern. While these shapes establish the recession into space along these lines, they set up a frame for the diverse illustrative incidents to occur in a tranquil, impersonal drama." (Maurice Prendergast, New York, 1994, pp. 40-41)
By the end of the nineteenth century Prendergast had been exhibiting regularly in Boston and was beginning to establish his reputation as one of Boston's most highly acclaimed artists. His watercolors charmed the public and the critics alike, inspiring general praise. After concurrent 1897 exhibitions of his watercolors the Sunday Journal exclaimed "The works by Maurice B. Prendergast, both at the Art Club and Jordan Gallery are 'the rage of the town,' and well they may be reckoned." (as quoted in Maurice Brazil Prendergast and Charles Prendergast, A Catalogue Raisonné, p. 60) He was selling works and found eager patrons in Boston and other cities, and in 1898 embarked on his first trip to Italy.
"Stony Beach, identified in the Pan American Exposition catalogue as being Ogunquit, Maine, exemplifies the culmination of Prendergast's virtuoso watercolor style of 1896 to 1902. Little can be added to the standard approbations of the watercolor critics' vocabulary--sparkling, scintillating, effervescent--which have been applied to the painting ever since it received the Bronze medal in 1901." ( E. Green in Maurice Prendergast: Art of Impulse and Color, College Park, Maryland, 1976, pp. 107-108)