Biografie von Levi Wells PRENTICE (1851-1935)

Birth place: Harrisburgh, NY

Death place: Philadelphia, PA

Addresses: Syracuse, NY, 1870s-83; Buffalo, NY, 1883-late '80s; Brooklyn, late '80s-?; NYC; CT; NJ; Phila.

Profession: Painter

Exhibited: Adirnondack Mus., Blue Mountain Lake, NY, 1993 (retrospective)

Member: Brooklyn AA

Work: Adirondack Mus., Blue Mountain Lake, NY; Shelburne (VT) Mus.

Comments: Grew up on a farm in Lewis County, NY, and was listed as a landscape painter in Syracuse by 1872. For the next several years he traveled through the region, painting the Adirondack mountains and surrounding area. Both he and his father were listed as residents of Buffalo, NY, in 1879, 1880, and 1884. During these years, when his landscapes were bringing him recognition, he also painted portraits, decorated ceilings in homes, and designed furniture and houses. After moving to Brooklyn in 1884, Prentice began painting still lifes, focusing on fruit ó especially apples and plums óshown either piled high in pots in an interior or set into a natural setting. In the latter type Prentice typically presented the fruit: 1) tumbling out of a basket onto the grass or 2) growing on the tree (shown in a close-up, cropped view) with the natural landscape behind. Prentice moved often after leaving Brooklyn in 1903, living in NYC, Connecticut, and New Jersey before settling in Philadelphia (probably by 1907 when his son graduated from Philadelphia High School). Prentice's sharply linear and simple yet realistic renderings of fruit did not gain much attention with historians until the 1970s.

Sources: Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth, 205-06 (with repro.); Gerdts and Burke, American Still-Life Painting, 159-62 (with repro.); 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1: 454 (with repro.); Muller, Paintings and Drawings at the Shelburne Museum, 248 (with repro.); Nature Staged: The Landscape and Still Life Paintings of Levi Wells Prentice (exh. cat., Adirnondack Mus., Blue Mountain Lake, NY, 1993); American Paintings from the Masco Corporation (auction cat., Sotheby's, NYC, Dec. 3, 1998), 62-66.