Charles Prendergast 1863-1948

Kraushaar Galleries, New York
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 1935 (acquired from the above)
By descent to the present owner (her son)

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Exhibition of the American Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, February 1932, no. 117
New London, Connecticut, Lyman Allyn Museum, American Painting of the Last Fifty Years: Second Anniversary Exhibition, March-April 1934, no. 63
New York, Kraushaar Galleries, Charles Prendergast, October-November 1935, no. 21, illustrated

M.D.C. Crawford, "Gesso Exhibition on View," Retailing, Home Furnishings Edition, October 21, 1935
Lawrence Campbell, "Prendergast," Art News Annual 4, 1961, p. 156, illustrated
Carol Clark, Nancy Mowll Mathews and Gwendolyn Owens, Maurice Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, no. 2258, p. 680, illustrated

Charles Prendergast began his artistic career as a frame-maker in Boston, and was well-established in the field when he completed his first carved and painted panel in 1912.  The younger brother of the painter Maurice Prendergast, Charles looked to his brother’s paintings and watercolors for artistic inspiration.  Ross Anderson writes “Charles found the vocabulary of broad outlines, constrained movement, story-book picturesqueness, and exotic subject matter emergent in Maurice’s art conducive to application in his own work; the recalcitrance of the medium seemed to accentuate, more than in Maurice’s work, an archaic, naïve charm that was to pervade his entire oeuvre and introduce to the history of America a unique voice” (Maurice Prendergast, Charles Prendergast, A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 85).

Prendergast synthesized his frame-making techniques and knowledge of the decorative arts with his interest in a wide range of art historical periods.  Anderson continues, his panels “conform to certain broad aesthetic trends prevalent at the time, ideas important not only to painting of the period, but also to architecture, and the decorative and performing arts.  Mentioned previously was Charles’ link to the Arts and Crafts Movement; his work reflects the Ruskinian preference for asymmetry, irregularity, and roughness, and his interest in making screens and chests recalls the Arts and Crafts nostalgia for the handicrafts of a pre-industrial era.  More closely, Charles’ art reflects strong roots in the preceding but long-influential Aesthetic Movement, where the practice of blending diverse artistic traditions within a single entity—particularly in architecture and interior design—was widespread” (ibid, p. 90).

Screen, executed circa 1928-1932, elegantly illustrates Prendergast’s assimilation of these two prevailing movements in twentieth century design.  Comprised of three panels, each coated with layers of gesso and incised, the screen is painted and decorated with gold leaf, a technique derived from early Italian methods.  The idyllic subject matter, frieze-like arrangement of figures in stylized poses and liberal use of gold leaf are inspired by the artist’s attraction to Medieval and Byzantine paintings and Persian miniatures.  Despite the influence of these older western and eastern sources, Prendergast’s use of a dynamic compositional scheme of arching, rhythmic lines produces a distinctly modern effect.