Spring in Franklin Park

Girls in white and pastel-tinted pinafores and broad-brimmed hats frolic among trees loaded with pink and white blossoms in Maurice Prendergast's monotype Spring in Franklin Park (CR 1646).  The composition features a Japanese-inspired aesthetic in its tipped-up perspective, with the figures overlapping and diminishing in size as they move up the page, as if receding into space. Prendergast frequently used a stylus or the handle end of his brush to incise lines in the paint, as seen here in the white outlines of figures and foliage.  Careful wiping away of colored pigment left the white of the paper to form the girls' aprons and hat ribbons.  The bright green background, enlivened by variations in wiping and pressure, vibrates with subtle modulations of intensity and light while creating a unified backdrop for the composition.  A narrow band of green paint frames the image, with the artist's signature and the date inscribed along its bottom edge in the matrix.  He also produced a second impression or cognate, entitled Picnic in the Park (Private Collection, CR 1647), which faintly echoes the tones of the first print.  Spring in Franklin Park is one of Prendergast's rare dated monotypes and belongs to the "Franklin Park" suite of images and the monotypes in his "Children at Play" series.

Until 1896 the artist, along with his brother Charles Prendergast, lived near Franklin Park in Roxbury, a Boston neighborhood.  Boston's largest green space, Franklin Park's 527 acres were part of a continuous string of urban parks designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the late nineteenth century.  The artist's fondness for Franklin Park is evident in his many images of the commons produced in every medium in which he worked.  Examples include the oil painting Franklin Park, Boston (TF 1999.112), two watercolors entitled Franklin Park, Boston (TF 1999.111 and TF 1999.113), and the monotype The Breezy Common (TF 1992.72; CR 1661). For more information, see Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné (1990), to which the CR numbers for the monotypes noted above refer.

[possibly exhibited] The Prendergasts: Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of Maurice and Charles Prendergast, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, September 24–November 6, 1938 (perhaps as no. 120). [exh. cat.]

Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, Boston Society of Water Color Painters, Boston, Massachusetts, April 18–May 14, 1939.

America in Print, 1796–1941, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, New York, April 2–25, 1981 (as Franklin Park). [exh. cat.]

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

The Work of Charles and Maurice Prendergast, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 16–April 21, 1991.

Collection cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 1996.

Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America, The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (organizer). Venues: The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., April 4–August 3, 1997; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 5–November 9, 1997; Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, January 15–March 31, 1998. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 2004.

America in Print, 1796–1941. (exh. cat., Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc.). New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., 1981. Text pp. 85-86; ill. no. 83, p. 86 (color).

Sotheby's New York, New York (Sale 4544, February 18-20, 1981): lot 655. Ill. cover (color detail), lot 655, p. 279 (black & white).

Reif, Rita. "Auctions: Price of Prints Is on the Rise." New York Times (July 31, 1981): C: 19. Text p. C19.

Langdale, Cecily. Monotypes by Maurice Prendergast in the Terra Museum of American Art. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Museum of American Art, 1984. Text pp. 25, 78; ill. no. 16, p. 79 (color).

"Experimentation with Modernism: Museum Exhibit to Display 55 Prendergast Monotypes." [North Adams] Transcript (September 13, 1985): 6. Text p. 6.

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Pl. T-103, p. 212 (color).

Sozanski, Edward. "Delicate Images in Monotypes by Prendergast." Philadelphia Inquirer (December 10, 1987): C: 7. Text p. 7.

Clark, Carol, Nancy Mowll Mathews and Gwendolyn Owens. Maurice Brazil Prendergast; Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné. Munich, Germany, and Williamstown, Massachusetts: Prestel-Verlag and The President and Trustees of Williams College, 1990. No. 1646, p. 597; ill. no. 1646, p. 597 (black & white).

Spring in Franklin Park, Maurice Brazil Prendergast. Collection cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 1996. Ill. (black & white).

Moser, Joann. Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America. (exh. cat., National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution). Washington, D.C.: Published for the National Museum of American Art by Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. Fig. 42.