Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: Night scene with three women in blue

Maurice Brazil Prendergast

1895–97 · Recto: watercolor over pencil, bordered in pencil and watercolor · Robert Lehman Collection

This loosely painted watercolor with comparatively little pencil underdrawing is one of several splendid night scenes in the Public Garden Sketchbook. The roughly sketched females, whose path is illuminated by lanterns, convey a disquieting air in an oblique, festive setting. The ultramarine paint (often used by Prendergast in watercolors of the 1890s) left patches of undispersed pigment as it dried, producing the granular surface seen here and elsewhere in the sketchbook watercolors.

Artist

Maurice Brazil Prendergast

Date

1895–97

Medium

Recto: watercolor over pencil, bordered in pencil and watercolor

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975