Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1858-1924) was a US Post-Impressionist artist and member of the group Eight, who worked with oil and watercolour. He was born in Newfoundland (British colonies in North America), but soon moved with his family to Boston. He earned his living as a street performer and this was reflected in the rich colours of his early works. In the years 1891-1895, he studied in Paris at the Academy Colarossi. Here, he met the Canadian painter James Morrice, who pulled him into the company of avant-garde artists. He studied the works of Van Gogh and Georges Seurat. As the first American, he defended the work of Paul Cézanne. In 1898, he took a trip to Venice and here, he experimented with more complex compositions in his paintings. This gave rise to images like Fantasy or Central Park . He was a member of the Eight, which was a group of artists who protested academic bias. They believed in the freedom of creation without awards. His art was misunderstood in its time, though it was timeless. The Metropolitan Museum of Art even refused to hold a memorial retrospective of Prendergast after his death in 1924.