Trees 1918

Maurice Prendergast made this watercolor painting called Trees with loose washes of color, like he's capturing a fleeting impression. Look at how he builds up those tree canopies with these little dabs of blues, greens, and browns. It’s less about perfect representation and more about the feeling of being in a breezy, sun-dappled grove. The paint is applied so thinly in areas that the paper shines through, giving it a light, airy quality, while elsewhere it’s layered up to create areas of density and shadow. See that figure in the lower left, just a few strokes of pink suggesting a person? That touch embodies the way Prendergast’s work embraces ambiguity. His paintings are like visual poems, inviting us to piece together our own narrative rather than spelling everything out. It reminds me a bit of Bonnard, who also liked to use color and form to evoke a mood. Both artists remind us that painting can be more about feeling than seeing.