Venice

The monotype Venice (CR 1707) by Maurice Prendergast celebrates the Italian city's narrow medieval streetscape by juxtaposing the voids of open doors and windows with the flat planes of solid walls. Architectural details complicate the space: the mounted lantern, for example, defines the corner of a building while the curved ceiling of a passageway contrasts with the rectangular doorways and windows. Venetian women, wrapped in their distinctive black shawls, share the space with tourists attired in cosmopolitan fashions, but with an attention to class distinctions rare in Prendergast's work. The claustrophobic setting lends a sense of tension to their chance encounter. The architectural geometry of Venice provides a matrix for the curvilinear forms of the figures. Somber tones of yellow, ochre, and brown unify the image. This range of colors also suggests the patina of aged bronze, casting an aura of the antique over the contemporary scene, while the mica embedded in the Japanese paper adds a luster to the muted tones. A purple border delineates the edges of the image. On it in the lower left corner, the artist placed his signature, with the "s" reversed, perhaps inadvertently or as a reference to his creative process by which he transferred the image from plate to paper.

Prendergast was a committed modernist, but on his many trips to Europe he admired and absorbed important lessons from the art of the past. He relished the works of the Italian old masters that he saw in Rome and Venice, particularly the frescos of the Trecento (thirteenth century) Italian primitive painters and the later Renaissance Venetian artists Domenico Tintoretto (1560–1635) and Vittore Carpaccio (circa 1460–circa 1526) as seen in the palette of the monotype Venice and the vibrant crowds and processionals of many of his Venetian works.

Comparisons between Prendergast's different Italian images reveal noteworthy contrasts and similarities in subjects from solitary figures to merry crowds and in techniques that vary from minute details to the soft forms of abstraction. In the Terra Collection, the Italian works in addition to Venice include the watercolors The Grand Canal, Venice (TF 1999.123) and Monte Pincio, Rome (TF 1999.117) and its associated monotype Monte Pincio (TF 1992.94, CR 1699). Another Roman monotype is On the Corso, Rome (TF 1992.96, CR 1702). The remaining Italian monotypes connected to Venice are: Bella Regazza: Merceria, Venice (TF 1992.71, CR 1703), Festa del Redentore (TF 1992.83, CR 1708), Venetian Well (TF 1992.115, CR 1705), and Venetian Court (TF 1999.124, CR 1706). For more information, see Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné (1990), to which the CR numbers for the monotypes noted above refer.

Monotypes in Color by Maurice Prendergast, C. W. Kraushaar Art Galleries, New York, New York, December 8–31, 1936, no. 5.

In Search of the Present: The American Prophets, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, February 22–March 25, 1973. [exh. cat.]

Inaugural Exhibition of the American Galleries, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California, 1977. [exh. cat.]

The Monotypes of Maurice Prendergast: A Loan Exhibition, Davis & Long Company, New York, New York, April 4–28, 1979. [exh. cat.]

Monotypes by Maurice Prendergast from the Terra Museum of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venues: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., January 27–April 14, 1985; Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, April 27–June 30, 1985; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, July 12–September 8, 1985; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, September 20–November 17, 1985; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan, November 24, 1985–January 19, 1986; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, January 28–February 24, 1986; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, May 13–June 15, 1986; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 23–August 24, 1986; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, September 2–October 26, 1986; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, November 2–30, 1986; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 13, 1986–February 15, 1987; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Florida, June 21–July 31, 1987; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, August 8–September 27, 1987; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, October 4–November 5, 1987; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 15, 1987–January 7, 1988; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, January 20–March 22, 1988; Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 9–May 29, 1988. [exh. cat.]

Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 9–July 9, 2000.

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

Prendergast in Italy, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, July 18–September 20, 2009; The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy, October 9, 2009–January 3, 2010; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, February 14–May 9, 2010. [exh. cat.]

Inaugural Exhibition of the American Galleries. (exh. cat., M. H. de Young Memorial Museum). San Francisco, California: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1977. Ill. no. 68, p. 103.

Langdale, Cecily. The Monotypes of Maurice Prendergast. (exh. cat., Davis & Long Company). New York: Davis & Long Company, 1979. Text p. 12; no. 68, p. 103 (black & white).

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. 34, 114; ill. no. 34, p. 115 (color).

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. 1707, p. 616; ill. no. 1707, p. 616 (black & white).

Mathews, Nancy Mowll with Elizabeth Kennedy. Prendergast in Italy. (exh. cat. also translated into Italian as Prendergast in Italia; all pages are identical) London: Merrell in association with Williams College Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation for American Art, 2009. Text p. 104, 183 (checklist); fig. 12, p. 104 (color).