American Post-Impressionists: Maurice & Charles Prendergast | March 9 – June 10

The New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA) is proud to present American Post-Impressionists: Maurice & Charles Prendergast on March 9, 2018, the first large-scale exhibition in Connecticut devoted to these important, early modern masters. This presentation features over 100 works, including paintings, sculptures, frames, sketchbooks, photographs, letters, and tools drawn from the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Prendergast Archive & Study Center at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, which houses the largest Prendergast collection in the world.

American Post-Impressionists focuses on the unique artistic rapport shared by the brothers and traces the development of their work throughout their careers and their involvement in major movements in 20th century art, including Post-Impressionism and the Arts and Crafts movement.

The Prendergasts represent a quintessential American success story. Born in St. John’s Newfoundland, they immigrated to the United States with their parents in the 1860s, settling in Boston’s South End. Despite their modest beginnings, the Prendergast brothers rose to great acclaim within a few decades, driven by a passionate desire to master their callings in art and craft and to participate meaningfully in the most significant artistic movements of the time. Friends, collaborators, travel companions, and studio mates, Maurice and Charles encouraged and promoted each other’s work, fashioning for themselves a life of culture and opportunity, exhibiting in prestigious shows nation-wide, and establishing their positions as masters of Modern Art.

American Post-Impressionists originates with Maurice’s early works of the 1890s, executed during his studies in Paris, and follows his return in 1894 to the United States. Represented are paintings produced in his subsequent travels to Italy, France, Maine, Massachusetts, and beyond, that demonstrate the artist’s increasing interest in the avant-garde techniques of Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse and his evolution toward a more abstracted depiction of figures and landscape, leading to his reputation as the “First American Modernist.” Among Maurice’s works, the exhibition features both well-known scenes of leisure and the landscape, such as St. Malo (ca. 1907); Seaside Park (ca. 1907–10), and Summer Day, Salem (ca. 1915–18), as well as rare winter scenes, still lifes, and portraits, including Winter Scene (ca. 1907–10); Woman in Green Dress, ca. (1910–13); and Poppies in a Blue Vase, ca. (1910–13).

Charles Prendergast will be represented by his hand-carved frames and sculptures as well as his idiosyncratic paintings, which diverge from Maurice’s compositions in their pared-down, folk art aesthetic. Steeped in the Arts and Crafts culture of Boston, and later, New York’s milieu of Modern artists, Charles produced highly prized frames for Maurice and other great artists of the day. Drawing on eclectic sources, he developed a technique of painting on carved and incised panels that were influential in American folk and primitive art circles throughout the early 20^th century. Rising Sun (ca. 1912); The Riders (ca. 1915); and Fairy Story (ca. 1915), evoke myriad influences, including Egyptian, Persian, Byzantine, and Renaissance art. Among the later works featured are a selection of vibrant compositions that Charles produced while living in Westport, Connecticut in the 1930s and 40s. Departing from his fantastical compositions of the 1910s, Circus Rider No. 9 (ca. 1940), and Skaters as the World Fair (1940), shift their focus to scenes of leisure and recreation, a theme beloved to both brothers.

Finally, a number of sketchbooks, photographs, letters, and tools will accompany the works on view, further bringing the art of the Prendergasts to life.

About the New Britain Museum of American Art

The New Britain Museum of American Art is the first institution dedicated solely to acquiring American art. Spanning four centuries of American history, the Museum’s permanent collection is renowned for its strengths in colonial portraiture, the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, the Ash Can School, as well as the important mural series The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton. The singular focus on American art and its panoramic view of American artistic achievement, realized through the Museum’s extensive permanent collection, exhibitions, and educational programming, make the New Britain Museum of American Art a significant resource for a broad and diverse public.

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