Maurice Prendergast has been lauded as America’s earliest and finest postimpressionist. From the 1890s through the 1910s he moved away from the impressionistic recording of natural scenes to develop a more personal mode of expression. Though Prendergast painted classic impressionist motifs – the beach, park strollers, quiet harbors – throughout his career, he actually was not interested in subject matter per se. He preferred to experiment with formal elements, conceiving of them abstractly. Cove, Maine marks the beginning of Prendergast’s move to a more avant-garde aesthetic.
During a 1907 visit to Paris he was staggered by the art of Paul Cezanne, which was presented at a major retrospective, as well as by the intimist paintings of Edouard Vuillard and the fauves. He noted a “new impulse” in his work arising from the experience. He loosened his brushwork further so that it took an energetic life of its own. The canvas became a tapestry of color and movement analogous to the melody and rhythm of music. He would often construct his compositions literally on the canvas, rather than conceiving of them in preparatory drawings, by first applying then changing the placement of his brushstrokes. With such color symphonies Prendergast advanced the cause of modern art in the United States during the years prior to the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced European modernism to this country.
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