MAURICE BRAZIL PRENDERGAST (1859-1924)

The present work was painted during one of the artist’s visits to the coastal town of Annisquam, Massachusetts. Annisquam was among the New England towns where Prendergast consistently spent his summers, specifically following 1914, when he stopped travelling abroad. The work aligns with Prendergast’s typical stylistic conventions, namely a Cezanne-inspired flattened perspective, Fauvist colorism, and partially abstracted forms. Prendergast’s time in France during the winter of 1890-1891, and again from 1909-1910, exposed him to these ideas and informed much of his later output. According to Milton W. Brown, the artist’s mature style “may be a belated response to his earliest experiences in Paris…when both Symbolism and Pointilism were current.” (Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 21)

Inlet at Annisquam demonstrates the artist’s move toward abstraction in his late career, a tendency that he implemented into his established subject matter of leisurely coastal scenes. Prendergast’s bold brushwork and color combine to create a striking modernist image of a bustling summer day.