Lady with Red Cape and Muff 1902

Maurice Prendergast painted this "Lady with Red Cape and Muff" with watercolor, and it looks like he made it up as he went along. It’s got those Prendergast-y blotches of color, like he was looking at Vuillard or Bonnard, but something went delightfully wrong, right? I can just imagine him there in the studio, trying to get the folds of that cape just right, and then thinking, "Oh, screw it, I'm just gonna let the color do its thing." Look at the way he’s got that black, wriggling line coiling down the center of the figure. Is it a scarf? Some kind of weird, abstract snake? It’s like he’s wrestling with the thing, trying to get it to behave, but it just keeps moving and shifting. That’s what painting is all about, you know? It's like a conversation with yourself, and sometimes the painting just takes over. And that's when the magic happens.