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Two Artistic Brothers With Distinctive Styles: Charles And Maurice Prendergast At NBMAA

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At the turn of the 20th century, whenever Bostonians gathered by a riverfront, lakeside or seacoast to spend their leisure time, Maurice Prendergast was there to record the scene. Prendergast secured his position in the American art pantheon with his array of colorful scenes of families at play. His paintings often were surrounded by elegant frames handmade by his younger brother Charles Prendergast.

However, little has been made of Charles Prendergast’s art-making. A show at New Britain Museum of American Art gives both brothers a place in the sun. For Maurice, that oil-painted or watercolored sun usually shone on gatherings of modern-day people on holiday. For Charles, the sun was carved in wood, often plated in gold, shining on scenes inspired by mythology, fantasy, folklore and the Bible.

“Their stories are so interwoven because they worked so closely together,” says Lisa Williams, curatorial assistant at NBMAA. “But they each had distinct artistic personalities.”

The exhibit has more than 100 items, most loaned by Prendergast Archive & Study Center at Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass., whose Prendergast collection is the largest in the world.

The brothers, who lived and traveled extensively together, both studied art in Paris in the 1890s. Maurice began creating art first, from his schooling years until his death in 1924.

While Maurice painted, Charles carved. Charles’ picture frames were uniquely tailored, accenting features of each artwork. In addition to his brother, his clients included John Singer Sargent and other prominent painters. Around 1912, Charles began making his own artworks using his woodworking techniques, carving images into wooden panels and painting over them.

Maurice Prendergast’s brother Charles Prendergast preferred folk art and mythological inspirations, as in this “Decoration on Glass” from 1925–30, made from silver and gold leaf with tempera on glass.

“Maurice was at the forefront of the artistic avant-garde, while Charles was drawing art of the classical and Renaissance, with trends that were happening in the arts and crafts movement,” Williams says.

Maurice began his work in France and Italy, re-creating festivals and merrymaking in small towns. His best-known work came later, when he was ensconced as a member of The Eight, an arts collective striving for dynamic depictions of urban life. Other members of The Eight strove for realism. Maurice preferred a post-impressionist style, influenced by Seurat, Cezanne and the color-obsessed Fauvists.

Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts has the world’s largest collection of works by Charles and Maurice Prendergast, including Maurice’s 1914-15 oil on canvas “The Birches.”

Maurice’s depictions – ladies in white dresses holding red parasols, surrounded by scampering children, twisted trees by the waterfront, the sun shining brightly – often were likened to mosaics or tapestry, with their featureless figures and chunky brushwork. The popularity of his work, fortuitously timed concurrent with the American Parks Movement, which encouraged pursuit of leisure activities, helped change the image of Boston, from a shipping-industrial center to a verdant, picturesque tourist draw.

Maurice’s acclaim notwithstanding, Charles is the charmer in the exhibit. He went his own way, rejecting modernism and realism, preferring folk-arty, fantastical and often silly depictions of humans and animals living as one. Winged youths walk with unidentifiable creatures. A scene of the familiar Annunciation is created flatly, like a Medieval artwork, with floral patterns in the background. In his collections of animals, Charles seemed particularly fond of warthogs, with their brushy manes and sharp tusks.

Maurice Prendergast started his career painting crowd scenes in Italy and France, including “Festa del Redentore,” a rendering of an annual festival in Venice celebrating a town’s 1576 deliverance from the plague.

Some artworks, however, show Charles straying into his brother’s realm of contemporary American leisure pursuits, such as a large-scale, detailed work of a circus and a smaller piece of a stunt rider.

One bay in the exhibit is devoted to showing how Maurice and Charles approached the same subject: bathers. Maurice, inspired by Cezanne, removes his naked subjects from any connection to time and place. These could be modern-day beauties, Greek or Roman goddesses, or anyone from any time in history or any place in the world. Charles doesn’t bother with that, showing his bathers in then-contemporary swimming gear, holding beach towels, but with flat and stiff faces again resembling Medieval depictions of humans.

“Charles was fascinated with abundance, harmony, rebirth, somewhere between reality and a dream,” Williams says.

AMERICAN POST-IMPRESSIONISTS: MAURICE & CHARLES PRENDERGAST is at New Britain Museum of American Art, 56 Lexington St., until June 10. nbmaa.org.