Summer 2017

Summer 122 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Visiting Paris in 1907 and again in 1909–10, Prendergast embraced the newest art, particularly the watercolors of Paul Cézanne. Bridging the world of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent (whose work he admired) and these new sources of inspiration from France, Prendergast pushed the art of watercolor into the modern era and linked together the first watercolor movement and the new generation. Prendergast revisited the beach subjects and processional compositions of his earlier work, now with larger, simpler figures, pressed forward into a shallower space. Flat color patches and strong contours, sometimes overlaid with pastel, built an assertively modern, decorative surface. In a similar spirit, the next generation of modernists would find watercolor a familiar field for experimentation. By the time of Prendergast’s death in 1924, closely followed by Sargent’s death in 1925, many young American painters—including the great modernists of the Stieglitz circle, John Marin and Charles Demuth—were accomplished and celebrated in the medium, and others, such as Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield, were entering the scene. Watercolor was now embraced as perfectly suited to the national artistic character. Kathleen A. Foster is the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Maurice Prendergast (1858–19240), Bathers, New England, around 1916–19, Watercolor and pastel with graphite on wove paper, 15¾ x 22 ⁄ inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: 125th Anniversary Acquisition; Gift of C. K. Williams II (2003-63-2).