Summer Visitors 1896

"Summer Visitors" was made by Maurice Prendergast, likely *en plein air*, using watercolor on paper. Watercolor has a beguiling, fugitive quality; it is light in weight, but also in its effect, allowing Prendergast to capture a sense of leisure and transience. The artist deploys the medium with deftness, applying washes of color to evoke the dappled light on the water and the carefree atmosphere of a seaside resort. He has made the most of watercolor’s inherent properties of transparency and fluidity, allowing the white of the paper to shine through, thus creating luminosity. The quick, gestural brushstrokes also allow a certain ambiguity of form. In this way, the artist has rendered a vibrant scene of social interaction, with figures strolling along the shore, parasols raised against the sun, and boats bobbing in the distance. This direct approach to art-making emphasizes the importance of materials and process in understanding the artwork's full meaning, inviting us to reconsider the distinctions between high art and the everyday experience of capturing a moment in time.