1859 - 1924 • American • Painter • Post-Impressionist/Modern
"Prendergast. What does that name bring to the mind? Pictures gay, joyous. Trees and silver skies. Deep blue sea and orange rocks. People in movement, holiday folk in their saffron, violet, white, pearl, tan." - Charles Hovey Pepper, 1910
Although he exhibited with The EIGHT in 1908, Prendergast did not pursue the Socialist concerns of those in the group who were known as the ASHCAN painters. It has been noted that Prendergast was the first American to truly understand French MODERNISM while it was developing. His outlined shapes, neither solidified nor shaded, were filled in with short thick strokes of bright color; they give something like a MOSAIC effect. The illusion of depth comes from overlapping forms rather than PERSPECTIVE, and his figures tend to move across the canvas in horizontal bands. Prendergast's imprint is so lively, exultant, and distinctive that his park and beach scenes seem to proclaim his signature at a glance. Promenade at Nantasket (c. 1900), with its parade of strollers and the ocean in the background, is the sort of picture that the critic Pepper refers to in the quotation above. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood One of the few movements named by its own participants, and that began at a specific time and place: September 1848 at the London home of one of its founding members, MILLAIS, age 19. William Holman HUNT, 21 and the driving force of the group, and ROSSETTI, also 21, were present. These three, students at the Royal Academy of Art, spearheaded PRB (as their group became known) in reaction against the sterility of ACADEMIC art and training. They renounced all art from RAPHAEL to their time and looked back to MEDIEVAL art and legends for ideas. They were also inspired by the NAZARENES Germans who began working in Rome some 40 years earlier and whose elaborate allegories and Medievalism appealed to them. The thrust of the PRB manifesto was to study nature, where they could find "genuine ideas." They rejected idealized and artificial forms of beauty such as were expressed by the late RENAISSANCE school in general, Raphael in particular, as well as the GRAND MANNER of the ACADEMY. They sought a new look to express their interest in an elaborate new technique, laying transparent colors on a wet white ground. It was a painstaking process, pursued inch by inch, much like FRESCO painters had preceded, centuries earlier, on wet plaster. They wanted a high, fresh, sunlit effect, with clear, sharp focus, nearly microscopic in attention to detail. PRB paintings were heavily moralizing in the movement's early stages, and closely linked with literature. RUSKIN, also still in his 20s at the time, was one of their guiding lights, reinforcing the centrality of nature and the idea that every detail in a painting should have symbolic meaning- as in the Medieval world, animals and plants represented particular virtues and vices. Because they were a "secret society" with a manifesto of their own, the PRB members were highly suspect and their paintings savagely criticized at the first exhibition, in 1850, when their movement became known (see MILLAIS). They published a journal called The Germ. The PRB was hardly alone in its turn toward Medievalism, as PUGIN's slightly earlier promotion of GOTHIC architecture and its moral foundations testifies. The rebuilt Houses of Parliament (designed in 1835 by Sir Charles Barry and Pugin) had a Neo-Gothic style. With growing nationalism, the various countries in Europe each looked back into its historical past. With their literary interests, Chaucer was dusted off by PreRaphaelite painters, and illustrated both in painting (BROWN's Chaucer, 185I) and print ( Chaucer~ published in 1896 by William MORRIS's Kelmscott Press). The Arthurian legends, Shakespeare's and Marlowe's plays, and the poems of Tennyson also provided inspiration. The PRB attracted a number of followers. Each of its members developed his or her more individualized interests and styles (there were several women who were attracted to the movement), but only Hunt among the front-runners remained true to the Brotherhood's ideals. By 1860 Rossetti, painting sensuous women, moved closer to the interests of AESTHETICISM, while Millais worked a good deal in portraiture and the Scottish landscape. Primary Structures An alternative term for MINIMALISTA RT used in 1966 to name a groundbreaking exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City, where Minimalist sculpture was shown for the first time: Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors.