  About the Artwork
  
  
  Though less tightly orchestrated than many of Prendergast’s seaside processionals, this work is typically organized into three horizontal bands of grass, sea, and sky. The friezelike arrangement of the figures is abstractly echoed in coloristic sequences that are, for the most part, applied in broad, rectangular strokes, with the white ground visible around the blocks of color. While the immediate inspiration for this technique can be traced to the French painter Georges Seurat (whose works Prendergast studied on his trips to Europe and also at the Armory Show of 1913 in New York), Prendergast developed an individual style in which the dabs of color are so large they no longer are subservient to the scientific theories of the rendering of light, but are instead components of a colorful mosaic pattern.
            
 
This painting was part of a mural project conceived by artists Walt Kuhn (1880–1949), Arthur Davies, and Maurice Prendergast in 1914. The three painters executed a set of four large canvases, which they exhibited in the spring of 1915 in New York City. John Quinn, one of America’s foremost collectors of European avant-garde art and a great admirer of the work of these Americans, purchased all four: this work and its companion piece, Picnic (now in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh); Kuhn’s Man and Sea Beach (now lost); and Davies’ Dances (DIA acc. no. 27.158).
  
  
  Title
  Promenade
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1914 or 1915
  
  Artist
  Maurice Brazil Prendergast
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1858-1924
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  ----------
  
  
  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 85 × 134 inches (215.9 cm × 3 m 40.4 cm)
  Framed: 88 5/8 × 139 × 2 5/16 inches (225.1 cm × 3 m 53.1 cm × 5.9 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  City of Detroit Purchase
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  27.159
  
  
  Copyright
  ----------
