Three Sketches

Typical of Charles Prendergast's decorated panels in its rhythmic arrangement of figures and forms across the deliberately flattened space of imagined landscapes, Three Sketches evokes a cryptic narrative in its three discrete sections. In the top section, two women appear in a hilly landscape in which a cluster of buildings, including a church with a steeple, evoke a New England village. In the middle section, a walking man drives the first of three donkeys across a panorama of stylized striated hilltops, while a woman rides on the middle one. At the right in the bottom section, one of four women kneels in profile, facing a taller, centrally placed figure flanked by two smaller or more distant women holding the strings of floating balloons before a mountainous backdrop. A distant ocean horizon appears in the left background of each of these scenes, which feature an abundance of flowering plants or trees. The sections are joined visually by the penetration of figures' heads or the balloons from one section to another: defying the boundaries within which each scene maintains a discrete illusion of spatial recession, this overlapping of forms emphasizes the compositional flatness of Prendergast's three-tiered composition, more surface decoration than picture of imagined space.

Prendergast began making decorative carved panels in 1912, following an important visit to Venice, Italy. Established as one of America's leading makers of innovative fine-art picture frames, he adapted the techniques of frame decoration to his panel paintings: applying a layer of gesso (a mixture of chalk and glue) in which he incised with the outlines of his forms, he then colored them with tempera paint, finishing with gold leaf for a rich effect with "antique" associations and enclosing the work in a narrow frame featuring a delicate pattern of diamond shapes and a wide "mat" of white finished wood.

Like many other early twentieth-century European and American artists, Prendergast was inspired by a variety of artistic traditions from other cultures, then considered "primitive," as he sought different examples of expression. By the time he made Three Sketches, however, he had abandoned the overt Near Eastern imagery seen in his earlier panels (TF 1992.60, TF 1992.62). In what the artist called his "modern" phase, after 1935, he turned to contemporary life for subjects. In the three scenes in this work, however, the pastoral settings and deliberate absence of any reference to modern technology, if not the figures' historically ambiguous dress, evoke a fantasy of an earlier, seemingly more innocent era. In Three Sketches, Prendergast melded the compositional inspiration of Persian miniature painting, which often features flowering plants and idyllic landscape settings, and references to American so-called folk art, which was much in vogue among collectors in the 1930s.

Decorative Panels and Sculpture by Charles Prendergast, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, New York, December 8–31, 1941, no. 14.

Charles Prendergast, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, New York, March 31–April 19, 1947, no. 10.

Charles Prendergast 1869–1948, Memorial Exhibition, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, New York, January 4–23, 1954, no. 28.

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

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1995.

American Treasures: Chase, Whistler and the Prendergasts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 26, 1996–January 5, 1997.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Art and Craft, The Work of Charles and Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–September 16, 2001.

Sotheby's, New York, New York (Sale 5335, May 30, 1985): lot 215. Text and ill. lot 215 (color).

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-144, p. 253 (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. 2292, p. 689; ill. no. 2292, p. 689 (black & white).

Three Sketches, Charles Prendergast. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1995. Ill. (black & white).