Brothers Maurice (1858-1924) and Charles (1863-1948) Prendergast were born in St. Johns, Newfoundland, the eldest and youngest of six children. Maurice and his twin sister, Lucy, and Charles were the only children of Maurice and Malvina Prendergast to survive childhood, and only Maurice and Charles would survive into adulthood. Maurice Prendergast Sr. owned a general store/trading post in St. Johns, but after the business fell on hard times the family moved to Boston where Malvina’s family lived. The family was solidly middle class and though the boys left school early, they had developed refined tastes and were comfortable in the drawing rooms of Boston.
At an early age, both Maurice and Charles showed artistic talent, but Charles, by his own admission, was less directed than his older brother. According to Charles, Maurice had always wanted to be an artist and found his way into a commercial art firm where he became a designer. In his teens, Charles became an errand boy for a Boston art gallery and then made two voyages to England as a deck-hand on a ship. In 1890, the brothers shipped out together to Paris where they both began taking art classes. Maurice applied himself studiously, taking classes at the Atelier Colorossi and Academie Julian, sketching endlessly in his free time.
Charles, on the other hand, was less dedicated to his art studies and returned to Boston by himself. Discouraged from pursuing a fine arts career while in Paris, Charles became a partner in a firm that produced decorative wooden moldings. By the time Maurice returned from Paris in 1894, Charles had begun working on the manufacturing side of the business, gaining experience in all aspects of wood carving.
Maurice’s career flourished upon his return from Paris, his paintings exhibited at the art gallery where Charles once worked, and his friends were now artists whose work Charles had sold. This change in the brothers’ relationship caused Charles to slip into a depression, but Maurice eventually came up with an idea that helped his brother and himself. Maurice and his artist friends asked Charles to make them “artistic” frames that would enhance the visual effects they were trying to create in their paintings. Charles hand-carved and painted wood frames for Maurice and other wealthy artists and collectors in Boston’s art world, creating frames out of wood that could stand alone as works of art themselves.
Maurice Prendergast’s art was deeply influenced by his studies and experiences in Paris. The “modern” style of post-Impressionists Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and others, can be seen in the work he produced after his return from France to Boston in 1895. Maurice continued to travel, working in Venice for a year in 1898, and again in France around 1907.
It was during the 1907 visit to France that he became profoundly affected by the work of the Fauves painters, and by Cezanne in particular. His work changed during this period, becoming more forceful in the use of color and brushstroke. His paintings and watercolors began to take on a somewhat abstract feel, the images pieced together in a flattened, pattern-like way. His figures were simplified, represented in flat areas of bold color. These works have been aptly described as looking like tapestries or mosaics.
In 1913, Maurice exhibited seven works in the landmark Armory Show. These seven works exemplify his personal style and are examples of its stylistic maturity. In 1914, Maurice moved to New York City with his brother and would spend the winters there painting and the summers sketching in New England until his health failed, and he died in 1923.
Maurice never married. His relationship with his brother, Charles, was the most important one he had. The brothers often traveled together, but in 1911, Charles decided to spend the summer in Italy on his own. This trip is seen as pivotal in Charles’ artistic career. His sketchbooks from this trip show a new interest in drawing and the use of color. Charles continued to craft frames, experimenting with color and forms in new ways, showing the influence of wood carving he had seen in Italy in elaborate rosettes, birds and angels. This experimentation and his rekindled interest in drawing brought him to a new medium: the carved pictorial panel which joined his skill as a woodcarver and his bold use of color.
After their move to NYC, Charles was asked to show his panels in an exhibition which led to other exhibitions and increased recognition as an “artist”. Charles’ interest in ancient, primitive and naïve subjects was not unusual in the art circles he and Maurice belonged to in New York during that period. From 1912 to 1915, the brothers explored together the world of the antique, primitive and naïve imagery together. In their shared studio, they chose subjects that symbolized renewal and rebirth, and Charles in particular chose subjects that evoked an idyllic world, in stark contrast to the realities of an impending world war.
After Maurice’s death, Charles continued working in their studio and participated in the many memorial exhibitions that honored his brother’s legacy. Four years after Maurice’s death, Charles married Eugenie Van Kemmel in 1927. Charles’ standing in the New York art world grew as he associated with dealers and museum curators who worked on the exhibitions of Maurice’s work. Soon, Charles was exhibiting at the same galleries and selling works to high-level collectors. Over the next ten years, Charles would work in several different media, including decorative wood carving and painted wood pieces, as well as producing a series of watercolors painted while on trips to France with his wife, Eugenie. After a period of ill-health, Charles died in 1948, leaving Eugenie as the guardian of the work of both Prendergast brothers.
In 1983, Eugenie and the Prendergast Foundation formed an association with the Williams College Museum of Art to sponsor the catalogue raisonné of the brothers’ work. Mrs. Prendergast donated or bequeathed approximately 400 works to the museum and established funds for ongoing research and projects.
Joseph Butler was on the board of the Prendergast Foundation, and it was through this association with Eugenie that he was able to acquire the works by Maurice and Charles Prendergast that are in his collection. Butler’s own interest in ethnographic and primitive subjects is a constant thread throughout his collection and is reflected in the Prendergast works he owned. Maurice Prendergast’s Study St. Malo #11, from c. 1907, is a very fine example of the landscape panels he made in France during his 1907 sojourn with Canadian painter James Wilson Morrice. Known as pochades, these panels were painted sketches done en plain air in the manner of the Impressionists to capture the colors and the atmosphere of a setting. The influence of the Fauves painters can be seen in the bright colors and staccato brush work, creating design in the imagery that has geometric undertones while at the same time relying heavily on the landscape/seascape genre of the Impressionists. His work from this period was seen as very progressive and was criticized for its strong use of color and abstraction.
While St. Malo and Park Scene, a watercolor from 1909-1910, are typical of the style associated with Maurice, his Sea Maidens is an example of his exploration into primitive and folk styles. The much later Bird, c. 1928, by Charles is another example of this style and helps to show the importance of the time the brothers spent together in their studio, and how Charles continued to pursue this aesthetic after his brother’s death. Also in Butler’s collection are two hand-carved frames attributed to Charles Prendergast that have been made into mirrors.
The works by Maurice and Charles Prendergast in the Collection of Joseph T. Butler are the highlights of an eclectic and diverse group of objects and works of art who share the commonality of interests of a life-long connoisseur and academic collector. Seen together, one can appreciate the quality of the individual works and how they relate to each other, creating a wholly personal collection that is an enduring legacy to the man who created it.