Maurice Prendergast was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and immigrated to Boston.  His interest in art bgan as a young man when he accepted an apprenticeship as a show-card painter.  He studied and worked in this field for nearly ten years.  In 1886 he and his brother, Charles, who was very supportive of Maurice and his chosen career path, traveled to England and France.  Maurice Prendergast returned to Paris in 1891 and for the first time studied formally at the Academie Colarossi and the Academie julien.  The young American was exposed to French Impressionist painting and the more contemporary neo-impressionist, symbolist, and nabis movements.  Four years later, he returned to Boston where he and his brother, now a very skilled frame maker, worked together.  But Maurice’s passion for travel led him back to Europe – this time he traveled to Venice, where his works took on a new vibrance.

Although Prendergast exhibited with the group of urban realists known as the Eight in 1908, his style and subject matter were not controversial.  While some of his work depicted city scenes, his paintings typically encompass a lighter palette and softer ideas than that of the Eight.  One such example is “Via Girabaldi”, a watercolor painted on one of Prendergast’s Italian excursions.  The subject is of pedestrians strolling near the entrance to the Giardini Pubblici on Via Girabaldi during a Venetian festival.  It explores repetition, the contrast of color and light, and pattern.  Painted in bright blocks of color, the watercolor takes on a mosaic quality which could have been influenced by the stained glass windows of Italy’s Byzantine churches.  Prendergast’s later work contains crowds of monochromatic, flat figures at Boston’s parks, fairs, and other places of leisure.

(Newfoundland, 1859 – 1924, New York City)