Maurice Prendergast, Rialto, Venice, (1911–12), courtesy Williams College Museum of Art. |
Maurice Prendergast (1858–1924) was by far the most progressive and inspired of The Eight, the group of American artists known for careful observation, direct painting, and unabashed love of the American subject. The Eight only showed together once, but the talent on hand was extraordinary—Robert Henri, John Sloan, and Prendergast, most notably, but also Arthur Davies, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, and Everett Shinn. Yet Prendergast goes without due regard. The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a Prendergast retrospective in 1990. Since then, a handful of exhibitions of somewhat limited scope have appeared, including one at the Metropolitan Museum in 2000 of its own holdings, but opportunities to study his work in depth have been few. Thus the lovely show at the Williams College Museum of Art, focusing on Prendergast’s two Italian sojourns, is cause for joy. WCMA’s resources regarding this subject are incomparable. The museum has its own Prendergast Archive and Study Center and employs a co-author of his catalogue raisonné. This exhibition emphasizes Prendergast’s watercolors executed on site in Venice but also includes pictures from Rome, Siena, and elsewhere, and a suite of fine monotypes of Italian subjects that he may have made back in America.
Venice had already become a hackneyed subject by the time Prendergast made his first voyage there in 1898. A