Seated Girl 1913

Maurice Prendergast created this oil painting, Seated Girl, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. The girl's formal dress and rather stiff pose suggest a commission from a middle-class family, but Prendergast's decidedly modern style may have unsettled potential clients. The artist was associated with the group of American Impressionists known as The Eight, who sought to challenge the dominance of the conservative National Academy of Design and its control over exhibition opportunities. Prendergast and his colleagues advocated for artistic independence and pushed for the recognition of new styles coming from Europe. The broken brushwork and relatively high-key palette here owes a debt to French painting. Art historians often rely on exhibition records, letters, and reviews to understand the context in which such works were made and viewed. We can see that modern art had to fight for its place within existing institutions. The painting reminds us that artistic meaning is always shaped by social forces.