Bastille Day (1892): Art, History and Details

Bastille Day (1892) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maurice Prendergast (American, born Newfoundland [now Canada], 1858–1924).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Maurice Prendergast began to make monotypes in the early 1890s while living in Paris, where he was influenced by Edgar Degas's use of the technique. Prendergast focused on scenes from daily life, such as this depiction of crowds filling the streets of the French capital on the country's national holiday. He used layers of blue and black ink to evoke the shadowy tones of nighttime and orbs of bright pink to suggest the artificial light of lanterns illuminating the boulevards.

Object facts

• Title: Bastille Day
• Date: 1892
• Creator attribution: Maurice Prendergast (American, born Newfoundland [now Canada], 1858–1924)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: color monotype
• Dimensions: Image: 17.4 x 13.1 cm (6 7/8 x 5 3/16 in.); Platemark: 25.5 x 20 cm (10 1/16 x 7 7/8 in.); Sheet: 30.5 x 24.8 cm (12 x 9 3/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Monotype
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1954.337

A detail from the museum

This print is one of the few works that can be dated to Maurice Prendergast's early years in Paris.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Glaubinger, Jane. “Unique Prints. The museum collection contains a wealth of monotypes, one-off prints that embody creative exploration.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 55, no. 3 (May/June 2015): 6-8.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.