Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. His works featured distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. The National Museum of American Illustration deemed his painting Daybreak (1922) to be the most successful art print of the 20th century. Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia to painter and etcher Stephen Parrish and Elizabeth Bancroft. His given name was Frederick Parrish, but he later adopted Maxfield, his paternal grandmother's maiden name, as his middle, then finally as his professional name. He was raised in a Quaker society. As a child he began drawing for his own amusement, showed talent, and his parents encouraged him. Between 1884 and 1886, his parents took Parrish to Europe, where he toured England, Italy, and France, was exposed to architecture and the paintings by the old masters, and studied at the Paris school of Dr. Kornemann. He attended the Haverford School and later studied architecture at Haverford College for two years beginning in 1888. To further his education in art, from 1892 to 1895 he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under artists Robert Vonnoh and Thomas Pollock Anshutz. After graduating from the program, Parrish went to Annisquam, Massachusetts, where he and his father shared a painting studio. A year later, with his father's encouragement, he attended the Drexel Institute of Art, Science & Industry where he studied with Howard Pyle. Parrish entered into an artistic career that lasted for more than half a century, and which helped shape the Golden Age of illustration and American visual arts. During his career, he produced almost 900 pieces of art including calendars, greeting cards, and magazine covers. Parrish's early works were mostly in black and white. In 1895, his work was on the Easter edition of Harper's Bazaar. He also did work for other magazines like Scribner's Magazine. He also illustrated a children's book in 1897, Mother Goose in Prose written by L. Frank Baum. By 1900, Parrish was already a member of the Society of American Artists. Parrish took many commissions for commercial art until the 1920s. Parrish's commercial art included many prestigious projects, among which were Eugene Field's Poems of Childhood in 1904, and such traditional works as Arabian Nights in 1909. Books illustrated by Parrish are featured in A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales in 1910, The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics in 1911, and The Knave of Hearts in 1925. Parrish was earning over $100,000 per year by 1910, when homes could be bought for $2,000. In 1910 Parrish received a commission to create 18 panels to go into the Girls Dining Room of the Curtis Publishing Company building, then under construction at 6th and Walnut in Philadelphia. It would take him six years to finish the monumental project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxfield_Parrish
Maxfield Parrish As children, none of us can forget the first instance of seeing an art print or a book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Everyone recognizes the magical world woven by Parrish, usually with the color lapis lazuli in its purest form. His signature use of this color was so powerful that a certain cobalt blue became known as "Parrish Blue". His idealized images with figures of feminine pulchritude adorned in classical gowns with backgrounds of electric violets, radiant reds and rich glowing earth tone pigments, created an idyllic world indeed. Other images had scenes embellished with billowing clouds in a fairy tale ambience of maidens and knights lying under porticoes and these were equally harmonic, idealistic, and beloved. Books illustrated by Parrish no longer belonged to their authors, but rather they became "Parrish" books, just as a generic color became "Parrish Blue". As a result of this ability to create such a sublime splendor, Maxfield Parrish became unquestionably the most successful and best-known American illustrator of the early part of the twentieth century. His lush coloristic effects with extraordinary detail and academic perfection were first broadly recognized by the American public in the 1920’s and they rewarded him with an unrivaled national popularity. In 1925, one out of every four households in the United States had a copy of one of his art prints hanging on their walls. In a survey taken at that time by a group of art print publishers, findings showed that the three favorite artists were Cezanne, van Gogh, and Parrish. His work influenced that of other notable artists: Vasarely, with images that bordered on Op Art; Andy Warhol, who collected his work, with repetitive, reproducible Pop Art prototypes; and the great American illustrator, Norman Rockwell, who said that Parrish was his idol. The Realist, Photorealist and Superrealist movements owe their directions to his legacy. He was revered, but nearly forgotten, until his rediscovery when he was in his 90’s in 1964. He was a Hollywood-handsome man who had stashed his incredible talented self away in the remote hills of New Hampshire and once there, created a make-believe world of his own and never left. However, the fact remains that very few of Parrish's original paintings have been seen by contemporary art audiences. The most recent major exhibitions of his work were held in 1961 at a Bennington College exhibit, then in 1964 at the Gallery of Modern Art in New York, again in 1974 at the Brandywine River Museum in a tribute exhibition entitled "Master of Make Believe". The most recent comprehensive exhibition was in 1989 at the American Illustrators Gallery, the first New York exhibition since his death at the ripe and enviable old age of 95. After a long and self-satisfied life, this striking and earnest gentleman died on March 30, 1966, at his home and studio, "The Oaks", in Plainfield, New Hampshire. His artistic career had ended some six years earlier. https://americanillustration.org/project/maxfield-parrish/
John Jacob Astor IV asked a young artist named Maxfield
Parrish if he would like to paint a mural to hang in the bar-room of The
Knickerbocker Hotel, Astor’s glamorous flagship on 42nd Street and Broadway in
New York City. The fee was $5,000,
extremely generous for the time, but it came with caveats. First, the subject of the painting had to be
Old King Cole, and second, while Parrish would have complete artistic freedom
in how he depicted the nursery-rhyme character, he had to use Astor as the
model for King Cole’s face. Towards the
middle of the 20th century more and more murals were commissioned by businesses,
local governments and, starting in 1939, by the Works Progress Administration
as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. The
largest of these latter was James Brooks’s 235ft circular mural, Flight, at the
Marine Terminal at LaGuardia Airport, which depicts man’s dream of conquering
the skies, from ancient mythology through to modern-day reality. Parrish went on to paint eight additional
murals over the course of his long and influential career, including The Pied
Piper in 1909 for the bar at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. But Old King Cole is arguably his most
famous. It has all the hallmarks of his
later illustrations and prints, including bold, luminous colors, classical
architectural forms, and an impish sense of humor. “It launched his career,” says Laurence
Cutler. “Immediately afterwards he
received a commission to illustrate a cover for Harper’s Magazine, and from
then on he worked non-stop for the next 40 years.” When the Knickerbocker closed in 1920, Old
King Cole went into storage, then briefly hung in a museum in Chicago, and was
finally installed at The St. Regis, an Astor-owned hotel, in 1932. There, at the heart of Millionaires’ Alley,
as 55th Street was called at the time, it made the transition from artwork to
icon. See pictures at https://magazine.stregis.com/walls-of-fame/
Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British
march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.” Read the rest of poem at https://poets.org/poem/paul-reveres-ride
Paul Revere (1734 O.S.-1735 N.S.)–1818) was an American silversmith, military officer and industrialist who played a major role during the opening months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, engaging in a midnight ride in 1775 to alert nearby minutemen of the approach of British troops prior to the battles of Lexington and Concord. Born in the North End of Boston, Revere eventually became a prosperous and prominent Bostonian, deriving his income from silversmithing and engraving. During the American Revolution, he was a strong supporter of the Patriot cause and joined the Sons of Liberty. His midnight ride transformed him into an American folk hero, being dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, "Paul Revere's Ride". He also helped to organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the movements of British forces. Revere later served as an officer in the Massachusetts Militia, though his service ended after the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous American campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame. Following the war, Revere returned to his silversmith trade. He used the profits from his expanding business to finance his work in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon casting, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. In 1800, he became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2929 April 18, 2025
