Still Life 1913

Maurice Prendergast made this still life painting with oil on canvas, though when it was made is not known. There's a really lovely, casual approach to mark-making that I appreciate, and you can tell that he was having a great time. There is a delicious tension between the slightly slap-dash brush marks, and the rather stately subject matter, with the plant pot, wine bottle and bowls of fruit. The surface has a really nice texture. The paint application feels pretty direct; nothing is obscured and you can see exactly how he’s gone about constructing the image. It's almost like he built the painting out of little blocks of colour. Take the apples, for instance, each one is just a collection of expressive brushstrokes. His contemporary, Pierre Bonnard, also painted a lot of still lives and I wonder if Prendergast knew his work because I can see some similar concerns with colour and domestic subject matter going on here. Ultimately, these are just objects, but art gives them a whole new life.