Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1858-1924)
Franklin Park, Boston
watercolor and pencil on paper laid down on paper
14 x 20 in. (35.6 x 50.8 cm.)
Footnotes:
Provenance
Charles Prendergast (1863-1948), by descent from the artist, his brother, 1924.
Mr. and Mrs. John F. Kraushaar (d. 1946), New York.
Antionette Kraushaar (1902-1992), New York, by descent from the above, his daughter.
Richard Larcada Gallery, New York.
Coe Kerr Gallery, New York, 1978.
Private collection, Nebraska, acquired from the above, 1980.
Coe Kerr Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the late owner.

Exhibited
Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham Museum of Art, n.d.
(possibly) Palm Springs Desert Museum, A Hundred Years of American Art, January 1-March 4, 1979.
New York, Coe Kerr Gallery, The Remembered Image: Prendergast Watercolors 1896-1906, October 23-December 6, 1986, n.p., fig. 30, illustrated.
New York, Coe Kerr Gallery, American Impressionism, May 19-June 23, 1989, n.p., fig. 28, illustrated.

Literature
D. Adlow, Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 1963, p. 8.
E. Glavin and E. Green, 'Chronology', Maurice Prendergast: Art of Impulse and Color, College Park, Maryland, 1976, p. 38.
C. Clark, N.M. Mathews and G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast, A Catalogue Raisonne, Williamstown, Massachusetts, p. 356, no. 615 illustrated.

An important example of Maurice Brazil Prendergast's Impressionist watercolors, Franklin Park, Boston demonstrates the artist's fully matured style he developed during his 1891-1894 trip to Paris. During his time in Paris, in addition to his education at Atelier Colarossi and the Académie Julien, he was exposed to and internalized the works of European Modernists Eduard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Eugene Boudin. As beloved Prendergast scholar Nancy Mathews wrote 'By the 1890's, when young Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924) was searching for artistic direction, 'leisure' had become the grand theme of modern art. Impressionist, with its views of beaches and cafes, spread quickly beyond Paris and emerged as an international phenomenon among avant-garde artists. At the same time, leisure was promoted as the hallmark of a progressive society . . .With the impetus of political currency, American artists and writers capitalized on the modernity of the subject . . . But few artists were so well suited to capture this moment in the history of American culture as Maurice Prendergast. His talent and personality drew him to the kind of experiences turn-of-the-century leisure offered: the colorful jostling of holiday crowds, the experience of nature mediated by parasol and windswept banner, and the lowering of class and gender barriers to foster a sense of inclusiveness--however fleeting...True to his age, leisure became the great theme of Prendergast's art. Over time, attitudes and values changed, but he never lost his reverence for a subject that he felt made people more civilized and more human. Nor did he forget that art itself was a leisure-time spectacle.' (The Art of Leisure: Maurice Prendergast in the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1999, pp. 15-16)

Prendergast's watercolors from the 1890's are hallmarked by the usage of fluid strokes of rich colors highlighted with dabs of bright, vibrant colors to denote the hats, dresses, and parasols of the figures. These ambitious watercolors, such as Franklin Park, Boston, are quite complex, displaying the artist's immense talent to capture the vitality of modern life. During this period, the delineations between social classes was immensely prevalent, though in the parks and beaches that Prendergast captured, all members of society could comingle. According to Art Historian Milton W. Brown, 'Prendergast's crowds have a very particular character. They are anonymous as all crowds really are, but a Prendergast crowd is not just a mass of undifferentiated humanity, as in many Impressionist paintings. No one stands out by virtue of either personality or action, yet the people in it are individuals, each doing something of his own within the context of a group. Within this urban throng there are some indications of class distinction in dress, activity, and means of locomotion, but it is exactly the democratization of people in a Prendergast crowd that gives it its character.' (M.W. Brown, 'Maurice B. Prendergast', Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 16)

Franklin Park was designed in the 1890s by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted as the crown jewel of his 'Emerald Necklace', an 1,100-acre chain of parks connected by parkways and waterways throughout the greater Boston Area. This sprawling 527-acre parkland south of Boston, located between the Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester neighborhoods, was named after Boston-born patriot Benjamin Franklin and has been attracting crowds' people from across the Commonwealth for over 120 years. In Franklin Park, Boston, Prendergast has captured families playing and congregating throughout one of the parks open meadows, with several buildings doting the very high horizon line.