Portrait of a Young Girl 1913

"Portrait of a Young Girl" was painted by Maurice Prendergast using oil on canvas. Isn’t it interesting how Prendergast builds up the face with what look like individual tiles of color? Peach, lavender, and brown are all laid next to each other with such immediacy. I get the sense that he didn’t want to blend the colors too much. He’s preserving the integrity of each mark, almost like a mosaic. Look at the way he renders the girl's dress, with these choppy, squared-off strokes. The paint is pretty thick, so you can almost feel the texture, like the surface of a rough wall. But at the same time, the colors are so delicate. There is a similarity here with the early work of Marsden Hartley, a contemporary of Prendergast who also made use of flattened perspective and simplified forms. Ultimately, art is a conversation, an exchange of ideas across time. And I think Prendergast is inviting us to join in."