The Rocky Seashore (c. 1907–10): Art, History and Details

The Rocky Seashore (c. 1907–10) 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:

Throughout Prendergast’s career, the seaside was one of his favorite subjects, but in this watercolor, his true concern was color. Painting rapidly, Prendergast allowed the white of the paper to show around the edges of his jagged strokes of color, suggesting sunlight on wet rocks. This spontaneous seascape identifies him as one of the first American artists to experiment with modernism before the Armory Show in New York City of 1913, the first large-scale exhibition of European modern art held in the United States.

Object facts

• Title: The Rocky Seashore
• Date: c. 1907–10
• Creator attribution: Maurice Prendergast (American, born Newfoundland [now Canada], 1858–1924)
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor with traces of graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 38.3 x 55.6 cm (15 1/16 x 21 7/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 19th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1953.655

Collection credit

Anonymous Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Current Exhibitions", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 06, Summer 2004

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.