Promenade Salem 1920

Maurice Prendergast made this painting of a park in Salem with oil on canvas, but when? No one can say for sure! I find that freeing, don’t you? The blue backdrop of Promenade Salem feels almost like a stage set, and the figures in the park are placed with a theatrical sense of design. The paint itself is thick, almost sculptural, and this gives the scene a tangible, immediate presence. Look at the dark marks forming the gentleman’s jacket in the foreground, for instance: Prendergast renders the form with strokes that seem to vibrate with energy, creating a visual rhythm that animates the whole composition. Prendergast reminds me a little of Pierre Bonnard, who explored similar themes of leisure and everyday life with a similarly loose and intuitive approach to colour and form. Like Bonnard, Prendergast seems to invite us not just to look at a scene but to feel its pulse, to experience the sensory richness of the world through the act of painting.