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Lot 149
  • 149

Maurice B. Prendergast 1858-1924

Estimate
1,500,000 - 2,000,000 USD
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Description

  • Maurice Brazil Prendergast
  • West Church, Boston
  • signed indistinctly Maurice B. Prendergast Boston, l.l.
  • watercolor on paper
  • 22 1/4 by 15 1/4 in.
  • (56.5 by 38.7 cm)
  • Painted circa 1900-01.

Provenance

The artist
Bartol Family, Boston, Massachusetts
Mary Wheelright
Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, Massachusetts, 1927
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1969

Exhibited

Boston, Massachusetts, The Boston Water Color Club, March 1901, no. 65
Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; San Francisco, California, California Palace of the Legion of Honor; Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, Maurice Prendergast 1859-1924, October 1960-July 1961, no. 99, p. 94, illustrated p. 146
College Park, Maryland, University of Maryland Art Gallery; Austin, Texas, University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin; Des Moines, Iowa, Des Moines Art Center; Columbus, Ohio, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Maurice Prendergast, September 1976-April 1977, no. 34, p. 18, illustrated
Evanston, Illinois, Terra Museum of American Art, Five American Masters of Watercolor, May-July 1981, illustrated p. 19

Literature

Boston Evening Transcript, 1926, p. 10
William Mathewson Milliken, "Maurice Prendergast, American Artist," The Arts, April 1926, p. 182
"Maurice Prendergast," Antiques, September 1976, p. 460, illustrated
Carol Clark, Nancy Mowll Mathews and Gwendolyn Owens, Maurice Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, no. 766, p. 50, 404, illustrated 
Sue Welsh Reed and Carol Troyen, Awash in Color: Homer, Sargent, and the Great American Watercolor, Boston, 2000, p. 187, fig. 2

Catalogue Note

The Old West Church, originally founded in 1737, was designed by Asher Benjamin and built in 1806.  It was there during a sermon by Jonathan Mayhew, the church’s second congregational pastor, that the phrase “taxation without representation” was coined.  In 1837, Dr. Cyrus Bartol, a staunch abolitionist and affluent Bostonian, became the associate minister and later the head minister, serving the church for the next fifty years.  In 1890, as Bartol faced retirement and the congregation dwindled, the church was slated for demolition. The New England Magazine ran the following editorial:

"For eighty years or more, on the rise at the corner of the Cambridge and Lynde streets in Boston, there has stood a square high-shouldered, open-hearted looking church…Its contrasted colors in brick and stone and mortar have been mellowed by the hand of time.  A small fountain plays in the open square in front, sheltered under wide-spreading trees.  This is the ancient West Church, now alas! passed into history.” (as quoted in Maurice Prendergast: Paintings of America, 2003, p. 37)

The demolition never came to pass as a wealthy member of the congregation purchased the building and 🐷it was transformed into a branch of the Boston Public Library in 1894.  It existed as so for over 60 years and was one of the busiest and most vital branches in the city.  Around the time the church🍎 was reborn as a library, Maurice Prendergast’s critical success was on the rise, and he had established himself among Boston’s wealthiest patrons, including Sarah and J. Montgomery Sears.  Bartol’s wife commissioned Prendergast to create an image of West Church in honor of her husband’s lengthy tenure as its beloved minister.  Prendergast found the subject an ideal vehicle for his aesthetic aims and ultimately created five addition versions for his own disposal. 

West Church, Boston, created for Mrs. Bartol, is only one of two vertical versions of the six depictions executed.  Here the church’s prominence is emphasized by the vertical format, as the handsome façade of the building dominates the beautiful and bustling New England setting.  With its charming fountain and gently landscaped grounds, it was a popular destination for mothers to take their children on weekend outings.  In 1897, art and landscape design critic Mary Caroline Robbins boldly declared: “The parks and park systems are the most important artistic work which has been done in the United States,” notably focusing on the creations of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose works included New York’s Central Park and Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” of recreational sites (Pamela A. Ivinski, Maurice Prendergast: Paintings of America, 2003, p. 13).  Prendergast recognized the importance of such public gathering areas in the rapidly changing social fabric of the American city.

The twentieth century ushered in a new phase of public and critical support for Prendergast.  In the first few years, he exhibited extensively in Boston and the reception was unanimously positive; a 1901 exhibition of his work at The Boston Water Color Club, which included West Church, Boston, prompted one critic to write: “The gay and festive group of pictures by Mr. Prendergast takes in everything that is genial and joyous with the life of children and holiday crowds, from Telegraph Hill to Capri, and from the courtyard of the West End library in Boston to Venice…” (Maurice Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1990, p. 66).  The artistic stimulation and support Prendergast found in Boston proved a vital backdrop for the creation of such works as West Church, Boston, evidence of his reputation as one of America's f🎀oremost watercolorists.