American, 1851-1935

Levi Wells Prentice was an American still life and landscape painter. Prentice was associated with the Hudson River School. Prentice grew up on a farm in Lewis County, New York. By 1872, Prentice had traveled through the Adirondack Mountains, painting the views as well as the surrounding region. He opened his first studio as a landscape painter in Syracuse, New York in 1875.

In his painting, Prentice placed an emphasis on dark outlining with a concern for textual precision, creating dramatic contrasts. The shift between dark background areas and the vibrant hues of the fruit are done to give the compositions an exciting, visual energy. The fruit is presented with clarity and precision. An emphasis appears to be placed on the idea of man versus nature. The wooden baskets with hand-wrought nails represent a structured, man-made object, while the overly ripe fruit represents the fleeting qualities of nature. These paintings also demonstrate Prentice's remarkable skills at rendering color, form, and texture.

Art historian William H. Gerdts observed that there are several works by Prentice in which he achieves a quality of illusionism which is unsurpassed. In 1993, the skillful "illusionism" of Levi Wells Prentice was celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the Adirondack Museum in New York. His works continue to be appreciated by modern collectors.

EXHIBITIONS:
1882 Social Art Club of Syracuse, New York
1993 The Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York, retrospective

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Dayton Art Institute, Ohio
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Everson Museum of Art, New York
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York
Louisiana Art & Science Museum, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, New York
Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Rahr-West Art Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin
Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton, New York
Shelburne Museum, Vermont
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

MEMBERSHIPS:
Brooklyn Art Association