Cleveland Museum of Art

The Rocky Seashore

Maurice Prendergast

Date

c. 1907–10

Medium

watercolor with traces of graphite

Culture

America

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Throughout Prendergast’s career, the seaside was one of his favorite subjects, but in this watercolor, his true concern was color. Painting rapidly, Prendergast allowed the white of the paper to show around the edges of his jagged strokes of color, suggesting sunlight on wet rocks. This spontaneous seascape identifies him as one of the first American artists to experiment with modernism before the Armory Show in New York City of 1913, the first large-scale exhibition of European modern art held in the United States.

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