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Artist or Maker: Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924)
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Literature: C. Clark, N. Mathews, G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, no. 742, pl. 23, illustrated.
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Notes: The present work, Siena--Column of the Wolf, is among the finest examples of Maurice Prendergast's watercolors of Italy. Like the Impressionists in Paris, where he studied from 1891 to 1894, Prendergast took his primary inspiration from daily life, using crowded streets and squares to create paintings both modern in style and in subject.
In 1898, Maurice Prendergast traveled to Italy, visiting Venice, Siena, Florence, Orvieto, Padua, Rome, Naples and Capri. He stayed for approximately a year and a half with financial assistance from Sarah Choate Sears, an artist and photographer who was married to J. Montgomery Sears. Mr. and Mrs. Sears were leading patrons of the arts in Boston, befriending other artists such as Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. Mrs. Sears was repaid for her generosity for funding the trip with works from Prendergast. The Searses owned at least eight watercolors and four monotypes by Prendergast, six of Italian subjects.
As an American touring Italy, "He visited only the most popular destinations in Italy, gravitating toward the sites that drew the biggest crowds. Not only did he include tourists in his views of famous monuments, but he also created a series that captured unerringly the American tourist experience." (N.M. Mathews, The Art of Leisure: Maurice Prendergast in the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1999, p. 25) Siena was one of those tourist destinations.
The recurrent symbol of Siena is the She-wolf. Legend says that Siena was founded by Senius, son of Remus, of the twins Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome in Roman mythology. In order to fulfill their destiny as founders of the city, Romulus and Remus were kept alive being nursed by a female wolf. According to an ancient legend, when Senius and his brother Ascanius left Rome, they took with them the statue of the She-wolf, stolen from Apollo's temple and set up home in the Tuscan hills.
The Column of the Wolf stands in Piazza Postierla, which the Sienese refer to as the "Quattro Cantoni" or Four Corners, at the center of the city. In the present work, Siena -- Column of the Wolf, Prendergast captures the activity and movement of the square as men, women and children congregate around the large monument. Nancy Mowll Mathews writes, "By far the most extraordinary aspect of the Italian watercolors is Prendergast's use of detailed architectural structures as decorative backdrops for the parade of human life seen throughout the tourist's Italy at the turn of the century...he made it plain in his pictures that he had come as a tourist and aimed to capture the excitement of tourist haunts. As with his beach scenes, he presents a beautiful setting and then populates it with figures that are as lively and interesting as the sights confronting them." (Maurice Prendergast, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 17) Richard J. Wattenmaker adds, "In his Italian watercolors, Maurice used walls as natural grids; among their intervals he packed the spaces full of picturesque activity, a tradition that Carpaccio, the Bellinis, and the eighteenth-century Venetian view painters, especially Canaletto, followed in their large scale set pieces" (Maurice Prendergast, New York, 1994, p. 52)
In Siena--Column of the Wolf, Prendergast groups the figures in the composition: the men at the doorway, the men seated at the base of the column, the mother and child in the foreground, the two girls at right and the groups of women at left. "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." (M.W. Brown in C. Clark, N. Mathews, G. Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 16)
Prendergast's early watercolors mark the beginning of his personal style. It is in these works that he develops techniques to emphasize a surface pattern of transparent brushstrokes in bold colors. In the present work, he uses reds, blues, greens, oranges and yellows in the figures to add to the bustle of activity. Contrasting the bright colors, Prendergast has painted the façade of the building in yellows and lavenders and the natural variegated stone of the piazza in muted lavenders and grays. To anchor the colors, Prendergast has painted the monumental column a solid mossy green. Keeping the column as a single dominating form, Prendergast renders the men seated at the base in the same hues.
As typical of Prendergast's style, the artist uses a method of banding and trellising whereby the artist stacks compositional elements in horizontal bands. This technique of a three band composition can be seen in Siena--Column of the Wolf: the stone street as the lower band, the figures of the square are the middle band, while the façade of the building in the background makes up the top band. He has taken these horizontal bands and weaves them with his use of trellising the vertical large column and the diagonal pole of the flag, locking the composition together.
By the end of the nineteenth century Prendergast had been exhibiting regularly in Boston and was beginning to establish his reputation as one of Boston's most highly acclaimed artists. His watercolors charmed the public and the critics alike, inspiring general praise. "Prendergast's watercolors from this trip were immediately sought by collectors and dealers alike and continue to this day to be the most treasured of all his works." (The Art of Leisure: Maurice Prendergast in the Williams College Museum of Art, p. 25)
Siena--Column of the Wolf, retains a carved frame by Charles Prendergast. Maurice Prendergast and his brother Charles, often collaborated with Charles framing the artist's works. The "Prendies" were a popular pair in art circles, first in Boston, and then, after 1914, in New York. They kept their professional lives separate, neither speaking for the other when it came to commissions, exhibitions or purchases. But they lived together, worked in the same studio, traveled in the same circles of friends, and shared enthusiasm for the same artist and ideas. The collection of photographs, books and art magazines that they kept around them served both for motifs and inspiration. After their trip to Italy in 1911, they both began experimenting with ideas drawn from ancient, non-western, and folk art. Siena--Column of the Wolf is a wonderful example of a lifetime of collaboration between these two artistic brothers.
This important watercolor, Siena--Column of the Wolf, is a wonderful example of Prendergast's mastery of color and space. His works from Italy are the most colorful of his career and this work magnificently captures his impressions as a tourist in Italy.
