Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Figures on Rocks (recto); Study of Three Figures (verso)
1905-1906
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Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Figures on Rocks (recto); Study of Three Figures (verso)
1905-1906
Physical Qualities
Watercolor over graphite; graphite, Sheet: 285 x 385 mm. (11 1/4 x 15 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Francis Keally
Object Number
1960.17
Figures on the Shore depicts a group of ladies picking their way along a rocky jetty on a windy day. So free and loose are the brushstrokes that figures are difficult to distinguish from the waves and rocks. One critic described Prendergast's works as akin to "an explosion in a color factory." The application of color and forms to suggest the figures and landscape hints at Prendergast's interest in modern European art, particularly the work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), an artist who Prendergast studied in Europe and championed in the United States.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 1967 (according to object file, the work was here on loan from 1960-67 and then given, although the Museum erroneously give the work a 1960 accession number); Mrs. Francis Keally, New York, 1958; purchased from Kraushaar Galleries, NY
American Realism: Ashcan Artists
Expressions of Nature: Early 20th Century Landscapes
"Accessions of American and Canadian Museums," Art Quarterly, 23 (Autumn 1960), p. 309.
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).
Inscribed: lower right in blue watercolor: "Prendergast"
