Maurice Prendergast
Birth Date: October 10, 1858
Death Date: February 1, 1924
Artist Gallery
The paintings by Maurice Brazil Prendergast were described once as “tapestries of nice people have a good time”. And when you look at this painting you can almost hear the happy buzz of the chattering people, and perhaps even the calliope music in the background. Notice how the brushstrokes make short staccato rhythms in the painting. Prendergast was the first of five children born to a grocer and a doctor’s daughter in St. John’s Newfoundland, 1858. The children had only a limited education; and soon after the family moved to Boston in 1868, Maurice was employed in menial jobs in a dry goods store. Prendergast’s brother, Charles would be his lifelong companion and collaborator; by the 1880s, the brothers’ aptitude for art had attracted the attention of local patrons, who encouraged them to travel abroad. From 1884 to 1887, Prendergast studied in Paris and later in 1898 to 1899, he was in Paris and Vienna. After 1900, he spent more time in New York with his American colleagues. This group of eight became known as the Ashcan School or simply The Eight includes: Arthur B. Davis, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everet Shinn and John Sloan. These artists, all individualists, held on common belief ~~ an artist should have the freedom and opportunity to express his message in his own way. A trip to Paris in 1907 opened his eyes to Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and modernist ideas about color and abstract from which he introduced immediately into his work and spent the rest of his life exploring. The superimposed colors, simplified forms, absence of detail and separation of brushstrokes made an impact on him. Although Prendergast worked in oils throughout his career, he began to pursue the watercolor medium with greater frequencies after 1904. From the beginning Prendergast’s subject mater included idyllic scenes of people enjoying the pleasures of a seaside, park or boulevard.