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Executed late in the artist’s career, The Bathing Cove is representative of much of Prendergast’s work at the time. The figures are just barely suggested by carefully arranged patches of color rather than fully articulated features and forms. Prendergast further emphasized these discrete patches of greens, blues, reds, pinks, and creams by outlining each section with dark, heavy lines, giving the painting the feeling of stained glass.
The composition is made up of separate horizontal bands: foreground (land and figures), middle ground (water and boats), and background (hills, sky, and trees). The artist has flattened the perspective so that the viewer perceives these areas as stacked on top of each other rather than receding realistically into the distance. The viewer’s sense of spatial recession comes from the overlapping of forms and from the hieratic perspective: the lowest forms are the closest. Prendergast’s emphasis on the flatness and two-dimensionality of the canvas, strengthened by the painting’s nearly square format, marks him as a modernist.
In addition, Prendergast makes no attempt to disguise his brushstroke. Instead, he lays the paint on thickly, creating a rough surface, and reminding the viewer that the object before him is a painting rather than a glimpse of reality. In this way, Prendergast demonstrated how far his painting style had evolved from the academic styles of his instructors at the Académie Julian. He more closely aligns himself with artists such as the post-Impressionists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, and Fauvist Henri Matisse, whose work he had seen at the Armory Show in 1913.
The Bathing Cove also calls to mind the work of another group of European painters, the Symbolists, whose subject matter tended toward the dreamy and otherworldly. There is a lyrical quality to the painting that sets it apart from Prendergast’s other contemporary urban scenes. Further, the painting includes enigmatic religious motifs that are unusual in Prendergast’s work: the three trees, symbolic of the trinity, a white lamb in the foreground, and, most surprising of all, a pietà in the lower right corner. [1] The Bathing Cove, painted toward the end of Prendergast’s life, is perhaps the work of an artist who was beginning to contemplate his own mortality.
Notes:
[1] Charles C. Eldredge, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, and Robert G. Workman, American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House, Museum of American Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 104.
ProvenanceFrom 1924
Charles E. Prendergast (1867-1948), Westport CT, received from the artist. [1]
From at least 1948
Eugénie Van Kemmel Prendergast (1895-1994), Westport CT, received from her husband Charles E. Prendergast. [2]
Dr. David B. Pall (1914-2004) and Mrs. Pall, New York, NY. [3]
From 1975 to 1982
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York on March 8, 1975. [4]
From 1982
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 30, 1982. [5]
Notes:
[1] Clark, Carol. Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné. Williamstown, MA: Prestel, in association with Williams College Museum of Art, 1990: cat. no. 499. See also Joan Durana Provenance Research, c. 1983, object file.
[2] Durana, object file. Mrs. Prendergast was the sister-in-law of the artist.
[3] Durana, object file.
[4] Email from Martha J. Fleischman, Kennedy Galleries, August 4, 2011, object file.
[5] Deed of Gift, object file.
Exhibition History1968
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (1968)
1990 - 1992
American Originals, Selections From Reynolda House Museum Of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
1996
Town And Country: In Pursuit Of Life's Pleasures
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, NY (5/12/1996-8/11/1996)
Published ReferencesClark, Carol, Nancy Mowll Mathews, and Gwendolyn Owens. Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné. Williamstown, MA: Prestel, in association with Williams College Museum of Art, 1990: cat. no. 499.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 104-5.
Town And Country: In Pursuit Of Life's Pleasures. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1996.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 45, 176, 177
DepartmentAmerican Art
The Bathing Cove
Artist
Maurice Brazil Prendergast
(1858 - 1924)
Datecirca 1916-1918
Mediumoil on canvas
DimensionsFrame: 35 1/2 x 34 5/8 in. (90.2 x 87.9 cm)
Canvas: 27 1/2 x 26 5/8 in. (69.9 x 67.6 cm)
SignedPrendergast
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
CopyrightPublic Domain
Object number1982.2.1
DescriptionWith The Bathing Cove, circa 1918, the American modernist Maurice Prendergast continued to explore a theme that had preoccupied him for decades: groups of figures, decoratively arranged into a frieze-like formation, in a bucolic outdoor setting. Here, bathers are gathered on a grassy knoll by the water’s edge, while sailboats bob in the distance. Like an earlier generation of artists, the Impressionists, Prendergast was attracted to scenes of leisure painted outdoors, but his nearly abstract forms and flattened perspective are evidence of his avant-garde style.Executed late in the artist’s career, The Bathing Cove is representative of much of Prendergast’s work at the time. The figures are just barely suggested by carefully arranged patches of color rather than fully articulated features and forms. Prendergast further emphasized these discrete patches of greens, blues, reds, pinks, and creams by outlining each section with dark, heavy lines, giving the painting the feeling of stained glass.
The composition is made up of separate horizontal bands: foreground (land and figures), middle ground (water and boats), and background (hills, sky, and trees). The artist has flattened the perspective so that the viewer perceives these areas as stacked on top of each other rather than receding realistically into the distance. The viewer’s sense of spatial recession comes from the overlapping of forms and from the hieratic perspective: the lowest forms are the closest. Prendergast’s emphasis on the flatness and two-dimensionality of the canvas, strengthened by the painting’s nearly square format, marks him as a modernist.
In addition, Prendergast makes no attempt to disguise his brushstroke. Instead, he lays the paint on thickly, creating a rough surface, and reminding the viewer that the object before him is a painting rather than a glimpse of reality. In this way, Prendergast demonstrated how far his painting style had evolved from the academic styles of his instructors at the Académie Julian. He more closely aligns himself with artists such as the post-Impressionists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, and Fauvist Henri Matisse, whose work he had seen at the Armory Show in 1913.
The Bathing Cove also calls to mind the work of another group of European painters, the Symbolists, whose subject matter tended toward the dreamy and otherworldly. There is a lyrical quality to the painting that sets it apart from Prendergast’s other contemporary urban scenes. Further, the painting includes enigmatic religious motifs that are unusual in Prendergast’s work: the three trees, symbolic of the trinity, a white lamb in the foreground, and, most surprising of all, a pietà in the lower right corner. [1] The Bathing Cove, painted toward the end of Prendergast’s life, is perhaps the work of an artist who was beginning to contemplate his own mortality.
Notes:
[1] Charles C. Eldredge, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, and Robert G. Workman, American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House, Museum of American Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 104.
ProvenanceFrom 1924
Charles E. Prendergast (1867-1948), Westport CT, received from the artist. [1]
From at least 1948
Eugénie Van Kemmel Prendergast (1895-1994), Westport CT, received from her husband Charles E. Prendergast. [2]
Dr. David B. Pall (1914-2004) and Mrs. Pall, New York, NY. [3]
From 1975 to 1982
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York on March 8, 1975. [4]
From 1982
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 30, 1982. [5]
Notes:
[1] Clark, Carol. Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné. Williamstown, MA: Prestel, in association with Williams College Museum of Art, 1990: cat. no. 499. See also Joan Durana Provenance Research, c. 1983, object file.
[2] Durana, object file. Mrs. Prendergast was the sister-in-law of the artist.
[3] Durana, object file.
[4] Email from Martha J. Fleischman, Kennedy Galleries, August 4, 2011, object file.
[5] Deed of Gift, object file.
Exhibition History1968
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (1968)
1990 - 1992
American Originals, Selections From Reynolda House Museum Of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
1996
Town And Country: In Pursuit Of Life's Pleasures
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, NY (5/12/1996-8/11/1996)
Published ReferencesClark, Carol, Nancy Mowll Mathews, and Gwendolyn Owens. Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné. Williamstown, MA: Prestel, in association with Williams College Museum of Art, 1990: cat. no. 499.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 104-5.
Town And Country: In Pursuit Of Life's Pleasures. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1996.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 45, 176, 177
Status
On view