CHARLES E. PRENDERGAST
Monte Carlo.
Gouache and pencil on cream wove paper, 1927. 260x340 mm; 10¼x13 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right recto.Provenance: Estate of the artist, Connecticut; Eugénie van Kemmel Prendergast, the artist's widow; the Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach; private collection, New Jersey. The current work is registered with the Williams College Museum of Art, Prendergast Collection, Williamstown, with a letter of authenticity, dated August 11, 2005. Artist brothers Maurice (1858-1924) and Charles Prendergast (1863-1948) were born in Newfoundland and moved to Boston as children. Both studied fine art in Paris in 1891 and by 1894, were living together in Boston, Charles making his career primarily as a framer and Maurice as an artist. Maurice modelled his work after the French avant-garde and exhibited with The Eight in New York in 1908 and at the landmark 1913 Armory Show. Charles was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and New England folk art. In 1915, Maurice and Charles exhibited together for the first time in New York at Montross Gallery. They continued to exhibit together with the Society of Independent Artists, where Charles was elected vice president in 1917. The Society, founded in New York in 1916, filled the void caused by the dissolution of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors after the Armory Show was mounted in 1913. It was based on the French Société des Artistes Indépendants with the mission of promoting avant-garde artists with annual exhibitions. Unlike the conservative National Academy of Design, membership in the Society was open to any artist able to pay a fee and annual dues. Among its other founders were Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Katherine Dreier, William Glackens, Rockwell Kent, John Marin, Walter Pach, John Sloan and Joseph Stella. Its first exhibition, held at the Grand Central Palace in New York in April 1917, was twice the size of the Armory Show, and espoused the democratic ideal of accessible arts.