Woman in a Blue Dress with White Boa and Large Red Hat

According to family legend, Maurice Prendergast's blond model for the monotype Woman in a Blue Dress with White Boa and Large Red Hat (CR 1745) was his friend Edna Higginson (Mrs. Augustus Barker Higginson), to whom he dedicated the print in an inscription in the margin.  Attired in a vibrant periwinkle blue walking ensemble, the fashionable young lady has accessorized her outfit with a long white boa and a pink shirtwaist to match her pink petticoat and the even deeper pink of the flowers in her hat.  Holding the hem of her skirt with her left hand and fixing her boa with her right, she strides confidently toward the viewer. Prendergast defined her facial features, including her blue eyes and pink mouth, using pigments on the matrix, and then enhanced them with light touches of graphite after printing.  The artist's use of graphite to augment the features of his female subjects is, at times, puzzling, as it is at best whimsical and at worse cartoonish.

This image is typical of Prendergast's monotypes in its emphasis on decorative qualities rather than naturalism.  Indeed, little distinguishes the pretty young woman of this image from the many such females the artist pictured in the monotype series of "Solitary Woman."  Several of those prints share this work's featureless, monochromatic background, which focuses attention on the female figure in motion.  Prendergast favored such a background in his later monotypes, those made after around 1900.  In this work, the lively brushwork was apparently added after the figure was painted on the matrix, as indicated by the marks of the brush dragged around the figure.  Prendergast finished the image with a brown border, obviously drawn with the aid of a straight edge.  In the slightly wider border along the bottom edge, he inscribed his name, reversing the D and G of "Prendergast."

Woman in a Blue Dress with White Boa and Large Red Hat was a gift to Higginson from the artist. Its hand-carved frame is believed to be by Charles Prendergast, the artist's brother.  The frame that houses this work is typical for a Prendergast monotype: a slender, hand-carved frame with a scooped profile painted with red clay bole and then water-gilded with gold leaf.  As with all Prendergast frames, it is possible that either one of the brothers could have created the frame. 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 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.]

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.

Portrait of a Lady : peintures et photographies américaines en France, 1870–1915 (Portrait of a Lady: American Paintings and Photographs in France, 1870–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (organizers). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, April 1–July 14, 2008; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, September 25, 2008–January 5, 2009 (exhibited in Giverny). [exh. cat.]

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. 32, 134; ill. no. 44, p. 135 (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. 1745, p. 629; ill. no. 1745, p. 629 (black & white).

Vanessa Lecomte, editor. Portrait of a Lady : peinture et photographies américains (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny and Musée des beaux-arts de Bordeaux). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2008. Text (checklist) p. 95.