Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: A nude woman with red hair

Maurice Brazil Prendergast

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

This half-length study of a nude woman is unique in Prendergast’s Boston work of the 1890s. Overtly sexual, the red-headed woman recalls sirens in the artist’s sketches of men’s smoking fantasies for J.M. Barrie’s My Lady Nicotine (on display in exhibition). The loose, broad undulating brushwork is anomalous in the context of the Public Garden 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