The Cove 1923

Maurice Prendergast made this painting, The Cove, with oil on canvas. I imagine him dabbing away, building up those tiny strokes to make this scene of figures relaxing by the sea. Those stippled marks of colour! Orange, red, blue, yellow. It’s a little like Seurat but looser, more playful, more intuitive. Prendergast must have been thinking about how to capture the essence of the scene rather than a photographic likeness, the light, the air, the feeling of being at the beach. I feel like I can see him squinting his eyes, trying to capture the movement of bodies in the landscape with a kind of shorthand. Each touch of the brush becomes a little notation of light, colour, and form, it makes me think about Bonnard, how he captures similar everyday scenes. Painting is all about conversations, across time, space, and place. Each artist is trying to figure it all out again, and differently.