Charles Prendergast

Charles Prendergast (1863 - 1948) was a Canadian-American Post-Impressionist artist as well as a designer and maker of picture frames. He was the younger brother of the artist, Maurice Prendergast.

Charles Prendergast was born on 27 May 1863 in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada. In 1868 the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he lived until 1914 when he and his brother moved to New York City.

In 1890 he traveled to Paris with Maurice, taking art classes with his brother who was studying at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian. On his return to Boston, Charles became a custom woodworker, eventually focusing on creating unique picture frames influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. He produced “highly prized, hand-carved frames for the greatest artists of his day, including John Singer Sargent.

He traveled to Italy in 1911, again with his brother, visiting Florence, Venice, Pisa, and Siena. On his return to Boston, he began to produce paintings in addition to his frames; he was then almost fifty years old. His first painting, Rising Sun, was on a carved wood and gesso panel.

In 1915 he exhibited his paintings at the Montross Gallery in New York and in 1917 and 1918 at the Society of Independent Artists. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s he exhibited at the Kraushaar Galleries, also in New York.

In 1927, Prendergast married Eugénie Van Kemmel. He died on 20 August 1948 at the age of eighty-five in Westport, Connecticut.

The Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts maintains the "Prendergast Archive and Study Center"; it was established in 1983 in cooperation with Charles' widow, Eugénie Prendergast (1894–1994). Their collection holds approximately four hundred works by Charles and Maurice Prendergast, as well as about fifteen-hundred related archival objects.

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