MAURICE PRENDERGAST, Bal Bullier, Latin Quarter

Executed in 1893-4, Bal Bullier, Latin Quarter is a highly finished example of Maurice Prendergast’s early watercolor style. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Henry Palmer, Jr., the present owner’s great grandparents, educated their daughter Elizabeth Virginia Palmer in a manner appropriate for a young lady of her social status at that time.  During the years 1888-1892 while living in Boston, young Elizabeth attended Dancing School and the New England Conservatory of Music, took lessons at the Boston Riding Club and was instructed at The School at 6 Marlborough Street.  These intellectual, sporting and artistic circles, along with Mrs. Palmer's own interest in painting, were almost certainly where she and her daughter first met Prendergast, whose family had immigrated to Boston in 1868 and who by 1880 had begun to establish himself as a painter, often visiting the exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts which had opened in Copley Square in 1876. The Palmers' alliance with Prendergast seems to have continued during the mid-1890s in Paris, where both mother, a painter, and daughter, a sculptor, were staying at the Hotel France et Choiseul on the Rue St. Honore, and attending the Acadèmie Julian, where Prendergast was also studying. Elizabeth together with her parents, associated with many of the American artists then living in Paris.  Family tradition posits that it was Miss Palmer whom Prendergast portrayed in this painting, as her striking profile bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the young dancing figure.  Frederick A. Bridgman also painted Elizabeth’s portrait, which illustrates again this same distinctive profile, auburn upswept hair and elongated neck.  Bal Bullier, Latin Quarter  was acquired directly from Prendergast, and after the Palmers' return to America, was eventually displayed in the “Little Parlor” at the family home in Pontiac, Michigan, where it hung for more than 50 years.

 Throughout the 1890s, Prendergast took as his subject the picturesque crowds who gathered at fashionable outdoor cafes and dancing halls, such as the Bal Bullier, a particularly popular spot for American artists and tourists. Writing about a watercolor titled Park Scene, Paris, which relates to Bal Bullier, Latin Quarter, Dr. Richard Wattenmaker observes, “Park Scene, Paris of circa 1893-94 depends on the brisk pencil notations that underlie the delicacy of the watercolor touches laid over them.  At this early stage, Maurice already maintained the freshness of his color, without sacrificing spontaneity.  While he was absorbed in exploring the Impressionist discoveries of light and color, his sketchbooks and watercolors disclose knowledge of Manet and Delacroix watercolors as well as their paintings.  In fact, Maurice’s constant use of sketchbooks is akin to Delacroix’s methods of careful color annotations” (Maurice Prendergast, New York, 1994, p. 23).

 Fluid, transparent strokes of color extend beyond the borders of the well defined pencil under-drawings and create a feeling of immediacy and sense of spontaneity characteristic of Prendergast’s most fully developed watercolors but which belie the highly sophisticated and calculated organization behind the finished composition.  Prendergast has worked carefully and deliberately, filling the sheet with layers of pigment, saturating the paper with water and putting down strokes of color, sometimes blotting to create a transparent field of color or placing another layer of color to create a richly patterned and finished surface.  A multitude of jewel-toned and pastel greens is juxtaposed with the warm brown tones of the background, highlighted with touches of white that exaggerate the joyful movement of the scene.   

Although Prendergast’s reputation was subject to periods of ups and downs throughout his career, the memorial exhibition held by the Cleveland Museum of Art after his death in 1924, and the glowing articles that followed by such highly regarded figures as Duncan Phillips, Lloyd Goodrich and Van Wych Brooks, cemented Prendergast’s standing as one of America’s greatest watercolorists.