090901 Landscape Art Paintings

Maurice Prendergast, American (1858-1924)

Maurice Brazil Prendergast was an American Post-Impressionist artist who worked in oil, watercolor, and monotype. He exhibited as a member of The Eight, though the delicacy of his compositions and mosaic-like beauty of his style differed from the artistic intentions and philosophy of the group.

Maurice Prendergast and his twin sister, Lucy, were born at their family's subarctic trading post in the city of St. John's, in Newfoundland, then a colony in British North America. After the trading post failed, the family moved to Boston. He grew up in the South End and was apprenticed as a youth to a commercial artist. This conditioned him from the start to the brightly colored, flat patterning effects that characterized his mature work. He was also inspired by the example of Boston Impressionist Childe Hassam. A shy individual who experienced increasing deafness in his later years, Prendergast remained a bachelor throughout his life. He became closely attached to his younger brother Charles, who was also a post-impressionist painter.

Prendergast studied in Paris from 1891 to 1895, at the Académie Colarossi with Gustave Courtois and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and at the Académie Julian. During one of his early stays in Paris, he met the Canadian painter James Morrice, who introduced him to English avant-garde artists Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley, all ardent admirers of James McNeill Whistler. A further acquaintance with Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard placed him firmly in the Post-Impressionist camp. He also studied the work of Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat at retrospectives held in Paris in 1891 and 1892. Prendergast was additionally one of the first Americans to espouse the work of Paul Cézanne and to understand and utilize his expressive use of form and color.

Prendergast returned to Boston in 1895 and worked mainly in watercolor and monotyping. A trip to Venice in 1898 exposed him to the genre scenes of Vittore Carpaccio and encouraged him to experiment with even more complex and rhythmic arrangements. His inventive watercolors of Venice are among his most appreciated works today. In 1900, he had major exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Macbeth Galleries in New York, which earned him critical acclaim. He showed in a National Arts Club exhibition in 1904, through which he befriended the painters William Glackens, Robert Henri, and John French Sloan. He exhibited with them in 1908 at Macbeth Galleries, along with George Luks, Everett Shinn, and Arthur B. Davies, a group collectively known after the show as The Eight. Glackens in particular became a lifelong friend.

Despite poor health that hindered his work, Prendergast continued to show in major exhibitions throughout the remainder of his life. Important collectors like Albert Barnes and Ferdinand Howald became his patrons after his shows at the Carroll Gallery and the Daniel Gallery. His seven works at the landmark Armory Show of 1913 presented examples of his stylistic maturity. Seen in company with the most adventurous examples of Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, "his critical reception grew more favorable in [the] immediate aftermath [of that exhibition.]" In 1916, he participated in the "Fifty at Montross" show at the Montross Gallery, which also included works by Cézanne, Matisse, Seurat, and Van Gogh. His work was the subject of a retrospective at Joseph Brummer Gallery in 1921, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art declined to host a Prendergast memorial retrospective after his death in 1924; at that time, his art was still seen as too demanding and advanced for the Metropolitan's trustees. His first New York memorial exhibition was held ten years later at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Prendergast exhibited at the Macbeth Galleries in 1908 with the short-lived association of artists known as "The Eight" because he supported their protest against the academic bias and restrictive exhibition policies of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design. He believed in a "no jury, no prizes" openness that would allow independent or unconventional artists greater opportunities to find a wider, appreciative audience for their work. This controversial exhibition, which acquired legendary status in American art history, is seen as a seminal moment in the public response to Ashcan realism, as that form of gritty urban representational art was the style practiced by five of the participants (Henri, Sloan, Luks, Shinn, and Glackens), but Prendergast has nothing in common, in style or content, with that school of painting. Prendergast was far more a Modernist than any of the other seven members of The Eight. His ties to The Eight did not necessarily help his reputation in the long run: "Prendergast's irrevocable association with The Eight left him stylistically isolated in genealogies of modern art." A true independent, he fits into no particular category of modern American art.

Prendergast's work was strongly associated from the beginning with leisurely scenes set on beaches and in parks. His early work was mostly in watercolor or monotype, and he produced over two hundred monotypes between 1895 and 1902. He also experimented with oil painting in the 1890s, but did not focus on that medium until the early 1900s.

He developed early in his career and continued throughout his life to elaborate a highly personal style, with boldly contrasting, jewel-like colors, and flattened, pattern-like forms rhythmically arranged on a canvas. Forms were radically simplified and presented in flat areas of bright, unmodulated color. His paintings have been aptly described as tapestry-like or resembling mosaics.

We work hard to ensure that you get your art print in perfect conditions. If you are not happy with your purchase, for any reason, you can return it back to us for a refund. All what we ask is that you email us within seven (7) days of receipt of your art print that you wish to return your order. As soon as we receive your notice we will contact you to give you the return address along with all the information you require to mail the art print back to us for a refund.

We regret however for not accepting return of an art print that has been stretched, cropped, not in good condition or altered somehow after purchase.

To ensure that we will receive the returned art print, a traceable door-to-door courier must be used. We regretfully do not reimburse the return shipping charges UNLESS the return is due to a defect in quality or was damaged during transportation.

In such a case, where your order has arrived in unsatisfactory conditions, please take at the same date of receipt digital photos of your damaged product along with the shipping container (the box, tube, envelop, etc...) and send us the photos by email. Once we confirm your claim we will contact you to give you the return address along with the information you require to return the art print to us (FREE return) for a refund or replacement.

110% PRICE MATCH GUARANTEE

We at wall-art-gallery.com take pride in offering the lowest prices and best service available in our industry. We are confident that our prices are hard to compete. But even though, let us assume that it happened!

So…

If you find the same item at the same conditions for a lower price anywhere online, we will beat it and heap on an extra 10% off your purchase. For example, if our price is $100 and the competitor’s price is $90, we will match the $90 and provide an additional $10 off (10% of the $100 price difference), meaning that we will refund a total of $20.

We want you to rest assured that you are getting the absolute best price for the product you order.

WE ALSO PRICE MATCH OURSELVES!

If you find that our own website has a lower price for the same item you have ordered within six months of your purchase date (but not under promotional offers or special discounts) we will refund the difference as well.

Prior to requesting our price match policy, please make sure that the following terms apply:

* The 110% price match guarantee is valid up to 15 days after the date of your purchase,
* The 110% price match applies to the final product price including taxes and shipping charges,
* The artwork must be in stock on the competitor’s website and for sale online,
* The lower price must be valid and verifiable online at the time you request a price match,
* The product must be identical in brand name, size, weight and quantity,
* The product must be under money back guarantee,
* The artwork is printed on premium 100% cotton canvas, not on polyester or mixed texture,
* The competitor’s website is not a discounter or auction website (ie; ebay, overstock, etc..)

Promotional offers such as limited time offers, bundle offers, rebates, coupons, special discounts, refurbished items, used items, clearance, close out, buy one get one free and the like, are not eligible for price matching

If you believe your item qualifies, please contact us with the following attachments, and we’ll process the credit accordingly:

* The competitor’s product page URL link,
* Screenshot of the product,
* Screenshot of the product page from the competitor’s web site with the final price and full product details visible,

This artwork is in public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. If you’re a copyright owner of this artwork, or his/her legal representative, and you don’t agree that this artwork is public domain, please contact us.

The colors of the printing material, as well as the imprint might differ somewhat from the image on your device's monitor. Depending on the settings of your screen and the nature of the surface, not all colors will be printed as realistically as the digital version.

Furthermore, some pigments of the print products, as well as the printing may diverge somewhat from the representation on the device's screen.

Unlike almost all our competitors, and in spite of its cost impact, we go on printing to scale maintaining the proportions of the original painting as the Artist wanted it to be. In some cases however there might be around plus/minus ±1% tolerance in average, and maximum ±5% in very, very few cases.