Festa del Redentore

During Maurice Prendergast's first trip to Venice, in 1899, he witnessed the Festa del Redentore, held on the third Sunday in July to celebrate the termination of the plague epidemic of 1576. In Festa del Redentore (CR 1708), two women enjoy the festival at night from a balcony overlooking a canal. Presumably tourists, as indicated by their elaborate hats and white summer dresses, they have an excellent view of the festivities. Filling the distance is a temporary wooden pontoon bridge, supported by boats, that may lead either to the church of Santa Maria della Salute (Saint Mary of Health, built to commemorate the same event) or from it to the Venetian district known as  Giudecca. While the bridge shown here is taken directly from the artist's pencil sketch of an actual bridge, the image also reveals Prendergast's use of Japanese prints as a source of motifs as well as aesthetic. The influence of Japanese prints is evident in the monotype's decorative compositional aesthetic. It features such specifically Asian elements as the hanging lanterns and pink fan, the elegant women, and the distant fireworks reduced to an abstract design. Prendergast framed the scene with a brown ink border, but on the right side the brush marks of the red table escape beyond it in a casual manner. Festa del Redentore retains its original, simple gold scooped frame carved by the artist's brother Charles.

  As early as 1892, in his monotype Early Evening, Paris (TF 1992.81, CR 1570), Prendergast paid homage to images of nocturnal fireworks by American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler. Reflected and nocturnal light effects became an essential motif in the younger artist's watercolors and colored prints, as seen here in the fireworks and the cruising boats' colorful lanterns. The sketches he made during Venice's popular celebration inspired a number of his most admired Italian works. Aesthetically advanced in their modernist emphasis on a two-dimensional interaction of color and form and unusual in their design, these monotypes are assumed to have been created at the end of Prendergast's stay in Italy or soon after he returned to Boston.

  The suite of Prendergast's Venetian works in the Terra Collection include, in addition to Festa del Redentore, the watercolor The Grand Canal, Venice (TF 1999.123) and the monotypes: 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.]

Le Japonisme en Amérique: oeuvres sur papier, 1880–1930 (Japonisme in America: Works on Paper, 1880–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, September 15–November 30, 2002.

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.]

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. 15, 28, 34, 122; ill. no. 38, p. 123 (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. 1708, p. 616; ill. no. 1708, 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. 116, 183 (checklist); fig. 34, p. 117 (color).