Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Circus Audience
1889-1899
Scroll
Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Circus Audience
1889-1899
Physical Qualities
Monotype with graphite and colored pencil, Sheet: 232 x 203 mm. (9 1/8 x 8 in.)
Credit Line
Blanche Adler Memorial Fund
Object Number
1952.70
Circus Audience is a monotype which Prendergast created by applying ink to a smooth surface (like glass), placing a sheet of paper on top of this surface, and then rubbing the paper with the back of a spoon. Even though two or three pulls are possible from one inking, each will vary greatly in terms of saturation of color. For Prendergast the second or third pull produced the most desirable effects. Prendergast's monotypes (only 148 are known) all date from 1891 to 1902 and he exhibited them frequently during these years, indicating his belief that they were independent works of art.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 1952; Kraushaar Galleries, NY; Mrs. Charles Prendergast, Westport, CT, by 1948; Charles Prendergast, by 1924; the artist
American Realism: Ashcan Artists
Wick, Peter A., "Maurice Prendergast 1859-1924," Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1960, p. 106.
Langdale, Cecily. Davis and Long Co., "The Monotypes of Maurice Prendergast: A Loan Exhibition" 1979, p. 8, illus. p. 74.
Langdale, Cecily. "Monotypes by Maurice Prendergast in the Terra Museum of American Art," Chicago, 1984, p. 84.
Clark, Caroll S., Nancy Mowll Mathews, Gwendolyn Owens. Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast, a catalogue raisonné (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Williams College Museum of Art; Munich: Prestel, 1990) Exhibition Catalog: Williams College Museum of Art, no. 1592.
Inscribed: lower right in graphite: " M.B.P."; lower right in crayon: "P."
