Bella Regazza: Merceria, Venice

One of Maurice Prendergast's smallest compositions in the medium of monotype, Bella Regazza: Merceria, Venice (CR 1703), is also one of the most complex. In this nocturnal view of a Venetian shopping scene, eight figures are crowded into a shallow foreground space before lighted shop windows. Some of the figures are Venetian women, recognizable by their black fringed shawls and intricate hairstyles, colloquially called a pompadour. The artist brought a modern touch to a charming street scene by abstracting the space and by using only four hues of colors: the color wheel complements of green, purple and orange.

Bella Regazza: Merceria, Venice demonstrates the important influence on Prendergast of the subjects and aesthetic of American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler.  He admired Whistler's renowned small images of shop fronts, such as A Chelsea Shop (TF 1992.148), which are notable for their play of alternating geometric planes and voids. In Prendergast's monotype, the architectural grid of squares and rectangles in the shop windows and the paving stones serves as a foil to the curving lines of the figures in motion. The three shawled Venetian women can be read as three views of a single woman—back, side, and front—as she strolls along the street. In fact, Prendergast incorporated into this image several sketches of women from one of his Italian Sketchbooks.

A break in the "plate," visible in the bottom left corner of the monotype implies millboard was its matrix rather than a traditional metal surface.  As usual in his monotypes, a painted border frames the scene and also bears the artist's inscription of the title, Bella Regazza (beautiful girl) and Merceria, referring to the main thoroughfare of Venice leading into the Piazza San Marco beneath its clock tower. Prendergast's monogram places the artist symbolically in the middle of a famed tourist attraction.

The suite of Prendergast's Venetian works in the Terra Collection includes, in addition to Bella Regazza: Merceria, Venice, the watercolor The Grand Canal, Venice (TF 1999.123) and the monotypes: Festa del Redentore (TF 1992.83, CR 1708), Venetian Well (TF 1992.115, CR 1705), Venetian Court (TF 1999.124, CR 1706), and Venice (TF 1992.114, CR 1707). 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). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 16–April 21, 1991.

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

The Decorative Form: The Aesthetic Movement, Arts & Crafts and the Asian Influence in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 16–December 5, 1999.

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.]

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, 120; ill. no. 37, p. 121 (color as Bella Ragazza: Merceria).

Heimann, Nora M. "Singular Impressions." Arts [The Magazine for Members of The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts] 9:12 (December 1986): 20–23. Text p. 23 (as Bella Ragazza: Merceria).

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. 1703, p. 615; ill. no. 1703, p. 614 (black & white as Bella Ragazza: Merceria).

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, 182 (checklist); fig. 10, p. 103 (color).