An exhibition opening Saturday at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art will explore, for the first time, Maurice Prendergast’s lifelong fascination with the seaside in the late- 19th and early-20th centuries.
The first retrospective of Prendergast’s work in more than two decades, “Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea” will be on view Saturday through Oct. 13 showcasing more than 90 works in a variety of media, all inspired by popular summer enjoyment of the seashore.
Tracing the artist’s deepening interpretations of his favorite subject, the retrospective features works from more than 30 public and private collections and foregrounds Prendergast’s experimental style and leading role in the development of early American modernism.
THE TWO Maurice Prendergast pieces above, both watercolor and graphite works about the “South Boston Pier, 1896,” will be part of a new exhibition at Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
“No artist captured the holiday atmosphere of the New England coast better than Maurice Prendergast,” said Nancy Mowll Mathews, the exhibition’s co-curator.
“Through the scope and complexity of the works that we are bringing together, ‘Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea’ will illustrate how Prendergast transformed the visible reality of seaside resorts and coastal villages into an imagined, Arcadian vision all his own,” added co-curator Joachim Homann, curator of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
The first exhibition is the first to open under the leadership of new museum co-directors Frank H. Goodyear III and Anne Collins Goodyear, who started June 1.
“It is an honor to begin our time at the BCMA with this important retrospective of Maurice Prendergast, whose visionary and trailblazing work drew inspiration from this very region,” Frank Goodyear said.
The exhibit “continues to advance a fundamental part of the museum’s mission to organize ambitious and accessible exhibitions that generate new scholarship and appeal to audiences both regionally and nationally,” Anne Goodyear said.
The exhibition sheds light on the artist’s creative process by including a selection of Prendergast’s rarely seen sketchbooks and oil studies. The sketchbooks provide visitors with an uncommon perspective on Prendergast’s extensive preparation of his compositions, highlighting his spontaneity and playfulness. In his oil sketches Prendergast heightened the sensual experience of beaches by liberating color.
Born in 1858, Prendergast was one of the hordes of visitors who frequented New England beaches and resort towns between the 1890s and the 1920s. He died in 1924.
Prendergast was fascinated with modern life when it was most at ease, and his brilliant watercolors, animated oil sketches, and richly colored paintings provide insight into this age of leisure travel. Through his work, Prendergast articulated the promises of a society in “pursuit of happiness,” painting the public beaches of New England as the ideal venue for young and prosperous American society to celebrate its democratic values in communion with nature.
An opening reception and family activities will take place at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art from 6- 7:30 p.m. Both are open to the public free of charge.
Fully accessible, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is open to the public free of charge from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.- 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, and from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday.
¦ “MAURICE PRENDERGAST: By
the Sea”
What: Exhibit
When: June 29-Oct. 13
Where: Bowdoin College Museum of
Art, Brunswick
¦ “SEA CHANGE: Prendergast,
Maine, and the Coastlines of Modern Art”
What: talk and opening reception
When: Talk, 5 p.m. Saturday, June
29; reception, 6 to 7:30 p.m.,
Where: Kresge Auditorium, Visual
Arts Center, Brunswick
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