He carved out a nice career

The late-blooming art of the other Prendergast

October 05, 2010|Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

WILLIAMSTOWN — What a curious figure is Charles Prendergast. The lesser-known younger brother of post-impressionist painter Maurice, Charles Prendergast cultivated his late-blooming second career as an artist by zealously studying art then perceived as primitive, such as Egyptian reliefs, Persian miniature paintings, and American folk art. His figures look drawn by a child. He abandoned deep perspective, flattening space. But was he a folk artist, or a savvy Modernist?

“Charles Prendergast: In Search of ‘Innocence’ ’’ at the Williams College Museum of Art examines some of the artist’s great works alongside objects similar to those that inspired him, drawn from the museum’s collection. It’s a juicy little show. The museum is the repository of an unparalleled trove of works by the brothers Prendergast, thanks to the generosity of Charles’s widow, Eugénie, who died in 1994, the year before she would have turned 100 — if there’s any place to get a sense of Charles’s oeuvre, this is it.

Charles, curator Nancy Mowll Mathews suggests, sought and cultivated innocence in his work, and perhaps in his personality. But what is innocence? Can it be attained? Was Prendergast an especially calculating artist hiding behind a sweet, boyish mask? For a time, he self-consciously tested out styles from around the world in his painted carvings, but as he matured as an artist, his art took on its own fresh, intentionally naïve style. He was grouped alongside folk artists such as Grandma Moses.

Born in 1863, Prendergast grew up in Boston steeped in the Arts and Crafts movement, which had its own back-to-nature agenda, spurning anonymously made industrial products in favor of handcrafted work.

While Maurice, five years Charles’s senior, went off to study in Paris and gained renown, Charles became a partner in a wood-carving business specializing in fireplace mantels. After Maurice returned to Boston in 1894, Charles carved frames for his paintings. There are several carved pieces here, including the frame for a possible collaboration with Maurice, “Decorated Mirror With Two Figures’’ (1915-17). The angelic figures, which may be Maurice’s handiwork, are hard to read on the cloudy mirrors, but the frame endures: gilded, with a simple, almost blunt floral motif.

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