The Breezy Common

Maurice Prendergast's The Breezy Common (CR 1658) is a cognate or second impression, evident in its comparatively pale colors, made from the same matrix as the monotype also entitled The Breezy Common (TF 1992.73, CR 1657). The green grass and blue sky are dull by comparison with the first impression taken from the inked matrix, and the colors of some of the running girls' frocks are faded to white.  The figures grouped in the left foreground have retained their distinctive silhouettes but lost their vibrant colors.  Clearly readable in the green-line border that frames the image is the inscription of the work's title and the artist's signature.

The title of this work refers not to the famous Boston Common but to that in suburban Franklin Park.  Until 1896, the artist and his brother Charles Prendergast lived in Roxbury, a neighborhood adjacent to Franklin Park, the largest green space in a continuous string of parks designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the late nineteenth century.  In the same years Prendergast was creating images of Franklin Park, he was also depicting the metropolitan area's newly renovated beaches.  Such locations noted as settings for working-class leisure were among the artist's most important subjects.

Prendergast's fluid engagement with a single subject across various media is particularly apparent in his many treatments of the subject of Franklin Park. Examples include the oil painting Franklin Park, Boston (TF 1999.112), two watercolors entitled Franklin Park, Boston (TF 1999.111 and TF 1999.113), and another monotype entitled The Breezy Common (TF 1992.72; CR 1661). The similar compositions of the Breezy Common monotypes are based on a watercolor sketch from Prendergast's "Boston Water-color Sketchbook" (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, CR 1478).  The "Franklin Park" suite of monotypes is a subset of the series "Children at Play."

Other examples of cognates of Prendergast monotypes in the Terra Foundation collection are Going to School (TF1992.85, CR 1606) and Children in Street (TF 1992.77, CR 1605), and Primrose Hill (TF 1992.98, CR 1619) and Primrose Hill No. 2 (TF 1992.99, CR 1620).  Other examples of "Children at Play" monotypes include Children at Play (TF 1992.75, CR 1653), Jumping Rope (TF1992.87, CR 1612), and Reflection (TF 1992.104, CR 1667). For more information, see Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné (1990), to which the CR numbers for the monotypes noted above refer.