 Hello, and welcome to this week's barns takeout, your weekly dose of art from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I'm Bill Perthes, the Bernard C. Watson director of adult education, and today we step off of the main gallery into gallery two to look at a work hung here over the door leading into gallery three, a painting called Beach and Two Houses by the American artist Maurice Prendergas, painted in 1918. So this is a category of works that really preoccupied Prendergas, the American painter Maurice Prendergas, for pretty much for his whole life, and that is figures by the water. This is a subject he started working on really as he was just coming on as an artist, and it's one that he returned to over and over again through the end of his life. This is a bit of a variation. It comes later in his career, so 1918, he died in 1924. So within the last decade of his life, and I'll say something about what I think is particularly important about that in a moment. Prendergas was an enthusiastic traveler from early in his adulthood. He traveled regularly, going to Europe in particular, and in 1914 he took what would be his last trip to Europe, spending the majority of his time in Paris. And when he returned, he and his brother, the artist and frame maker Charles Prendergas, took up residence, took up studio, shared studio residence at 50 Washington Park South. They had a studio, a shared studio on the second floor, and just as a bit of an aside on the first floor, that was a gallery occupied by the American artist, friends of the Prendergas, as well as former Central High School classmate of Dr. Barnes, William Glackens, who as many of you know, played really a pivotal role in the early years of the Barnes collection. And when Glackens' son Ira had fond memories of visiting the Prendergas brothers studio on the second floor, which he described as having nothing that was unnecessary, the walls being filled with the pictures of Maurice Prendergas, giving it almost as if these were windows opening up onto endless vistas of sunny days, but also small touches like a box that contained pieces of textile, antique pieces of textile, and mosaics that were prized possessions of both Maurice and Charles Prendergas. And these were the kinds of objects that they turned to for inspiration when they were Charles either carving a frame or a panel or Maurice painting a painting. The Prendergas brothers along with William Glackens and Dr. and Mrs. Barnes spent summers on Long Island and Bellport Long Island in New York. And the Prendergas Maurice as well also traveled regularly to coastal towns all up and down New England, including Gohesset, Marblehead, Gloucester, and Salem. And as he traveled, he would fill notebooks, sketchpads full of ideas of figures and trees and landscapes and buildings. And particularly in his later years, these sketches became the models for his paintings. So he wasn't sketching, he wasn't trying to capture specific individuals, but rather postures and comportments and kinds of movement or positions that people would take in very quickly and very animated sketches. And then he would use those sketches as he was beginning to compose his pictures. So pictures such as this are not, I think, intended to be specific places, but rather more general, nor are the figures intended to be specific figures, but rather sort of types. But they're combined for the compositional needs of a given picture. So composed to suit the purpose of the picture as he was creating it. As I mentioned, this was painted in 1918. And this picture really shows Maurice Prennergas at his prime with a deft handling of color in his signature application of color in these little doves. And this was a technique that he developed by adapting ideas that he appreciated in the work of artists such as Paul Cézanne and Pierre Auguste Renoir. But these little doves of painting color we zoom in, we can see that they take on all different shapes and forms, everything from little spots of color such as this little dab of greenish-yellow that registers as light on a leaf on a tree, to elongated brushstrokes such as this line that is the branch of a tree, or sometimes thick and curvilinear with ragged edges, such as these, the brushstrokes that help animate and form the contours and suggest some of the volume of this figure, so these elongated curving brushstrokes. Brushstrokes such as these you'll also notice, zoom in a little more, have a ragged edge to them and what that allows Prennergas to do is to gently merge colors together, so that the two colors are almost like two pieces wedging together and that adds again adds variety. We're on the seated figure here, you'll notice this brushstroke here how it has all these little pock marks in it that allow the color beneath it to come through. It's a technique called scumbling, something that the French artist Chardin excelled at and that it's a technique that Prennergas adapted so so effectively, you know, with such a different, such a different palette. And speaking of palette, my friend and the wonderful art historian, Richard Wattenmaker made the observation that Prennergas, much like a composer composing in a certain key, that Prennergas often would paint in a particular palette or a picture that would would be dominated by a particular palette. And I certainly think that's the case here. This is a picture that's largely dominated by the this sort of mustardy yellow and this mossy and lichen green. And then along with that, we see these touches of the this chocolate brown or up in the sky, this rosy pink and then touches of blues, so steely blues and sky blues. Another thing about about color, because this picture is so much about color, is how Prennergas distributes color throughout the picture. That is that when we see a color in a given area, such as this chocolatey brown, and our eye is called or attention is called to it, our eye sees that picture, that color, that color throughout the picture. So it's that same brown that's picked up elsewhere in the picture, and that creates an overall sense of unity. As I mentioned, this is likely not a real place, but rather composed for this picture. And there's some very specific things that Prennergas is doing. You'll notice that the figures are distributed horizontally in the foreground, and that he gives us a variety of figures. The figures on the left are predominantly vertical, so these four vertical, perhaps five vertical figures. And then the figures on the right, which are seated, impart more curvilinearness to the picture. So this seated takes on this sort of reversed S shape, the raised arms of these figures creates these curving shapes. The picture is bracketed by these two trees, and they set off the center portion of the picture. And then Prennergas, just beyond that, creates planes with the facades of these buildings. And then visually balancing the mass of those buildings is the receding space that goes off to the right, so the mass balanced by the receding avenue of space. But throughout, what I can't help but be sort of captivated by are these spots of luminous, bright, vivid color. These little dappled brush strokes that, in part, to the surface of the picture, a kind of mosaic-like quality or a tapestry-like quality. And also a textural quality. These pictures, this picture, in particular, has a kind of rugged surface quality to it as well. Yet despite that, the surface has a dry surface to it, almost again like a fresco, for instance. So when I started, I showed you where this picture is. As I mentioned, it's over the door in Gallery 2, leading into Gallery 3. And it is sometimes mistaken that because Dr. Barnes hung a picture over a door that somehow the picture was left wanting, that it was a lesser work or that it was a picture that he wasn't particularly fond of. So he put it over a door rather than giving it a prominent place, such as the Algreta that centers this ensemble. But really anything could be further from the truth. Pictures over the door often play really central roles to suggesting themes in an ensemble or to create connections to other things in the gallery or other galleries, for that matter. And that, I think, is certainly the case here. We zoom in and just look at this portion of the gallery. I think it's quite deliberate and intentional why this picture is over the door and it's because of its relationship to the pictures that are surrounding it. This picture of this LA of Trees by Paul Cezanne, this Still Life by Pierre Auguste Renoir and these two pictures by William Glackens. So in many ways, I think what Dr. Barnes is suggesting is the inheritance with the debt, to some degree, that Prendergast as well as William Glackens have to these previous artists of Cezanne and Renoir. As I mentioned, Prendergast's mature form is one adapted from these two artists. So in some ways, the arrangement of these pictures in this corner is a kind of mini ensemble of itself. And then one final thing. I'm going to show you this gallery view because not only is this a remarkable picture, but it's framed by a frame carved by Maurice Prendergast's brother Charles. Many of the Prendergasts in the collection are framed by Charles frames. And this is one you see the design that's on the corners is these curved shapes given the nickname Sausage Sausage frames, one that in correspondence between Dr. Barnes and Charles Prendergast as Barnes was commissioning Charles Prendergast for frames he would he would identify as I want three Sausage frames of a certain a certain size. So what I love about this is that this represents the Prendergast brothers who works so closely together that that the inclusion of the frame with the picture brings them together as as in the same way that they work together in real life. So don't fret about works over the doors, but instead think about why what sort of connections that picture over a door might have with other works in the in the collection because they're they're often actually a clue to ideas that Dr. Barnes was trying to call our attention to in that given gallery. So until next time. Thanks for joining us. Take care. I'm Tom Collins, new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.