Be Inspired - Maurice Prendergast

Born in 1858, Maurice Prendergast was one of the great American impressionists.

The son of poor parents, Prendergast began to earn his living very early as a commercial artist. With the little money he was able to save, he went to Paris in 1886, and for three years worked at the Académie Julian and the Atelier Colarossi. The reputation of this independent artist was slow in coming, and this lack of recognition, as Suzanne La Follette notes in Art in America, is "a severe judgement of American taste during his time".

In 1908 Prendergast participated in the famous exhibition of the Eight, derisively dubbed the Ashcan School, which brought together the best American artists of the time.

He was a leading figure in early American Modernism and his work is included in over 90 museum collections including Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian, American Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Maurice Prendergast lived the rest of his life in New York, in a studio in Washington Square, where he died in 1924.