Maurice Brazil Prendergast (October 10, 1858 – February 1, 1924) was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes.

Maurice Prendergast and his twin sister, Lucy, were born at their family's subarctic trading post in the city of St. John's, in Newfoundland, then a colony in British North America.

Prendergast was additionally one of the first Americans to espouse the work of Paul Cézanne and to understand and utilize his expressive use of form and color.

[8] He showed in a National Arts Club exhibition in 1904, through which he befriended the painters William Glackens, Robert Henri, and John French Sloan.

He believed in a "no jury, no prizes" openness that would allow independent or unconventional artists greater opportunities to find a wider, appreciative audience for their work.

This controversial exhibition, which acquired legendary status in American art history, is seen as a seminal moment in the public response to Ashcan realism, as that form of gritty urban representational art was the style practiced by five of the participants (Henri, Sloan, Luks, Shinn, and Glackens), but Prendergast has nothing in common, in style or content, with that school of painting.

His ties to The Eight did not necessarily help his reputation in the long run: "Prendergast's irrevocable association with The Eight left him stylistically isolated in genealogies of modern art.

[17] He developed early in his career and continued throughout his life to elaborate a highly personal style, with boldly contrasting, jewel-like colors, and flattened, pattern-like forms rhythmically arranged on a canvas.