Maurice Brazil Prendergast

Born in Newfoundland in 1958, Maurice Brazil Prendergast’s work depicts charming scenes of 19th and early-20th century life. One of the first American painters to adopt a post-impressionist style, Prendergast’s work employs abbreviated, flat strokes that create brightly-colored scenes set in urban outdoor spaces. Maurice and his brother, fellow artist Charles Prendergast, studied and worked together abroad at the Académie Colarossi and later at the Académie Julian in France. It was during the artist’s time in Paris in the early 1890s that he began to create the vibrant, post-Impressionist paintings for which he is now most renowned.

Returning to the United States in 1894, Prendergast translated these French Impressionist palates into a distinctly American tableau, capturing the bustling public life of his home in Boston and New York City. These scenes of everyday life center on the leisurely goings-on of pedestrians set in parks, or along beaches and city streets. Prendergast would return to Europe frequently throughout his career, making several trips to Venice and Paris well into his later years. Deeply influenced by Fauvism and the work of Paul Cezanne,

Following his first major solo exhibition at Macbeth Gallery in 1900, Prendergast’s work was heavily featured in such significant exhibitions as the first Armory Show of 1913, and the pivotal 1908 exhibition of the Eight, alongside Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, and William J. Glackens. Further testifying to Prendergasts’s significance, his work is included in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC., to name a few.