Considered as one of the most relevant artists of his generation, Maxfield Parrish helped to define the Golden Age of American Illustration, creating some of the most popular and recognizable images in the history of illustration and graphic arts, in a successful career that spanned for over six decades.
Creator of his own painting technique -inspired by the technique of the great Masters of the Renaissance and refined through decades of personal experimentation-, Maxfield Parrish nourished from multiple artistic sources during his training, being mainly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, the European Romanticism, the Hudson School, and Victorian illustrators such as Arthur Rackham and Hugh Thomson.
However, Parrish managed to adapt his style to the different eras he went through.
A prolific artist, Parrish created over 900 artworks in a diverse range of formats, and incurred in all areas of visual arts, from murals and commercial art through children book’s illustrations, magazine covers, and formal art, making him one of them most reproduced and recognized visual artists in the world.
His singular artistic vision marked a unique style and aesthetic which even today, over a century after their creation, still inspire new generations of artists.
“Land of Make Believe” (1912)
Born in 1870, Parrish exhibited his talent for drawing at an early age, which was fostered and nurtured by his father -painter and engraver Stephen Parrish- with an education focused on the classical canons of painting and architecture.
Between 1884 and 1886, when Parrish was still a teenager, he traveled with his parents to Europe, visiting England, Italy and France. Parrish not only visited all the great museums and architectural monuments, but he also took painting classes in Paris at the famous school of Dr. Kornemann.
In 1888, at the age of 18, Parrish entered Haverford College where he studied architecture for two years. This formation would forever mark his style and influence the rest of his artistic career.
From 1892 to 1895, Parrish continued his artistic education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under the wing of artists such as Robert Vonnoh and Thomas Pollock Anshutz.
Upon graduation, Parrish returned to Massachusetts where he shared a painting studio with his father. However, a year later he entered the Drexel Institute of Art, Science & Industry where he continued his studies with the famous artist Homer Pyle.
True to his extensive artistic training, Parrish’s work is grounded on a meticulous drawing foundation, geometric composition of classic proportions, fine architectural precision, and a bold use of color and contrast.
Clockwise: W. A. Bouguereau, Lawrence Alma-Tadema,
Hugh Thomson, Arthur Rackham, Alphonse Mucha.
The Victorian era was a fertile time for the arts, influenced by the Industrial Revolution, Art Nouveau, and the advance of the British Empire across the world.
The most popular themes in early 20th-century art were those which portrayed the ideals and aspirations of the time: exoticism from distant lands, historical themes from antiquity, great Hellenic classics, or Shakespeare’s works. At the same time, the romantic aesthetics of the time favored classical canons, and an idealization of the themes represented.
Popular taste favored this classical and romantic aesthetic until the end of World War I.
Under this influence it is easy to see how and why at the beginning Parrish’s work favored profile figures, and later he shifted to scenes with high contrast, with a predilection for oblique lighting, sunrises, sunsets, etc.
In addition to their obvious aesthetic appeal, these characteristics made these images more easily reproducible with the available printing techniques of the time.
Parrish’s career began formally when, in 1894, while still a student, he was commissioned to create a mural for the University of Pennsylvania.
This work opened him the door to commissions within the editorial field, creating the Easter cover of Harper’s magazine. This work was followed by illustrations for other well-known magazines of the time, such as Scribners, The Century, and Colliers.
Magazine covers for Harper’s (1896), Scribner (1897), The Century (1897), Life (1899)
In 1897, Parrish illustrated the children’s book “Mother Goose” written in prose by Frank L. Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz) and continued adding several editorial commissions to his portfolio of works.
However, in 1903 his fascination for Europe took him to spend a season in Italy, where he created several oils and compiled a significant number of sketches that he would later use for many of his works.
In 1904, upon his return to the United States, Parrish received a surprising contract from Collier's magazine to work for them in exclusivity for 6 years, an important vote of confidence in his artistic quality and commercial appeal.
At the same time, Parrish continued working in other non-editorial projects.
"Old King Cole" mural
In 1905, John Jacob Astor commissioned Parrish to paint a mural for his Knickerbocker Hotel, with the unusual request that its theme should be the nursery rhyme Old King Cole and include Astor as the king in the images.
After some hesitation, Parrish accepted the commission, and although in 1932 the Knickerbocker Hotel was demolished, the mural was rescued and can still be seen at the bar of the
St. Regis Hotel in New York.
In 1906, Parrish was commissioned to create a mural at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco as part of the rebuilding effort following that year’s great earthquake and fire. This work would be intended for the hotel bar, with a dimension of 16 feet in length.
The final result, The Pied Piper, was unveiled in 1909 and can still be seen today.
"The Pied Piper" (1909)
In 1909, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney commissioned Parrish a series of murals for her home, which she later changed to her studio. By then, Parrish was so busy that he could only start work on them in 1914.
In total, Parrish created four murals, out of which The North Wall is the largest and most accomplished, evidencing an important theatrical influence in its composition.
"The North Wall"
In 1910, Parrish was commissioned another mural divided in 18 panels to decorate the Girls' Dining Room at the Curtis Publishing building. The scale of this project meant that it took Parrish 6 years to complete it.
However, before Parrish had finished it, in 1914 Curtis Publishing commissioned him another project: a mural for the building’s lobby.
The result, The Dream Garden, can still be admired today as part of the Academy of Fine Arts of Pennsylvania collection.
"The Dream Garden" mural
Continuing with his good run, in 1915 Crane chocolates company commissioned Parrish to design and illustrate a candy box. This commission not only helped to popularize his work even further among the mass public, but it also opened him the doors to commercial art.
Since then, Parrish created magazine covers, illustrations for children's books and books of other genres, theatre programs and backdrops, ads and posters for diverse companies and institutions, such as Colgate, Oneida, Wanamaker, and the Red Cross, among many others.
“The Golden Age” (1900), “Grape Gatherer” (1904), “Poems of Childhood” (1904),
Stage backdrop (1916)
After the World War I we can see a subtle but important change in the style of Parrish’s work, more influenced by Art Deco and more detached from Victorian romanticism.
It’s at this moment when Parrish created what would be his most famous and reproduced work: "Daybreak".
"Daybreak" (1922)
In 1918, Parrish received the first commission from the Edison Mazda General Electric Lamps Division to create a series of images that would be reproduced on calendars, advertisements, and various other promotional materials.
Their common theme would be light, its multiple facets and its history, from natural phenomena to the discovery of electricity.
Daybreak, created in 1922 as part of this commission, achieved an impressive run. It was estimated that one in five families in the United States had a company calendar with the image created by Parrish.
Parrish poured all his talent into such an inspiring subject, creating dozens of images, such as until the end of this commission in 1932.
The Edison Mazda image series became one of the most reproduced in history, bringing Parrish’s art to the masses and still today are considered highly coveted collector’s items.
"Dawn” (1918), “The lamp seller of Baghdad” (1923), “Venetian lamplighters” (1924),
“Enchantment” (1925), “Contentment” (1928), “Ecstasy” (1930)
Of a quiet and patient character, Parrish preferred to use friends and family as models since he felt that they captured the spirit of innocence he wanted to convey.
As part of his pictorial technique, Parrish frequently used photographs of his models projected onto the canvas or the surface of his murals. This gave his works a photographic realism and allowed him to achieve special effects, such as textures and textile patterns worked like mosaics.
The medium and large formats of his works allowed Parrish to achieve a fine level of detail, which he executed with great precision.
This passion for detail even led him to create models of mountains and castles as a reference for his paintings.
Later Parrish even worked his works as collages, cutting and pasting figures on the canvas, playing with depth of fields and perspective.
“The Knave” (1925)
Parrish always applied to his works the principles of Dynamic Symmetry devised by
Jay Hambidge, and declared that, “I lay each painting out on the basis of ‘dynamic symmetry’ or the mathematical proportion which the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians found appealing to the eye. Thus, by using ‘dynamic rectangles’ and ‘whirling squares’...I design the dimensions of my pictures and block them off, placing the horizon in just the right place.”
However, perhaps the most distinguishable characteristic of Parrish’s work is his use of color, in particular the hue of blue that carries his name, “Parrish Blue”.
“Water led in on a field of alfalfa” (1902), Egyptian sculptor (1903), The lantern bearers (1908), Red Cross poster (1918)
This is not a color in itself but the visual vibration of cobalt blue through multiple layers of varnish applied by Parrish during the elaboration of his paintings, a technique created by himself through experimentation, which started with a preparation of the support and included successive capable of varnishing between color applications.
This gives his works their particular golden luminosity and brightens the other colors.
The intensity of tones in Parrish’s work, particularly blues, became his most distinctive feature. And although lithographic reproduction techniques limited his use of colors, Parrish always sought the contrast of tonality, which added a greater emotional impact to his works.
The variety of media he used in his works (oil on paper, cardboard, Masonite, panel, canvas, among others) give account of his pictorial skill to achieve similar results regardless of the technique with which he performed them.
"Interlude" (1922), USPS stamp (2001)
In spite of his popularity and commercial appeal, over time the rapid change in popular tastes and the new artistic trends ended up by taking a toll on Parrish.
In 1931, he announced that his days of painting “girls on rocks” were over, and from 1935 onwards he worked exclusively on landscape paintings.
Although commercially less profitable than his images created for mass reproduction, Parrish had already created formal art landscapes before, and this change gave him great creative freedom, allowing him to venture into more realistic themes still tinted with his characteristic touch of dreaminess and idealism.
"The Glen” (1936), “At Close of Day” (1944), “The Old Glen Mill” (1950)
Parrish continued painting until well into his 90s. By then, his work was on the verge of oblivion, but it was rescued by a new wave of artists -such as Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, Vasarely- who, bowled over by his talent, acclaimed him as their idol and their source of inspiration.
Maxfield Parrish died in 1966 at age 95 in his New Hampshire studio. However, his work remains as alive, fresh, and captivating as it did a century ago.
In 2001, the United States Postal Service included Parrish’s work, Interlude, in an issue of stamps celebrating the most important American Illustrators of the 20th century.
Parrish’s inimitable style and his use of color, patterns, perspective, and composition have influenced and served as inspiration to hundreds of artists up to the present time, both directly and indirectly.
Some recent examples include the cover for Enya’s CD “The Memory of Trees” and the visual aesthetics for Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films.
Scenes from “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”, and
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
Maxfield Parrish’s extensive work is distributed among museums, galleries, universities, private collectors, and public spaces across the world, demonstrating the universal reach of his magnificent art.
Owner of a demanding technique, exquisite artistic precision, and an inspiring style widely imitated but never equaled, Maxfield Parrish rescued the themes, techniques, and spirit of the old world and brought them into a new era.
His images still capture the imagination, with idyllic landscapes of vibrant and overwhelming natures in which the human figure is merely a tiny spectator, the faithful and wistful reflection of a world and an era which were quickly left behind never to return.
Sources: Artnet.com, The Illustrated Gallery, Christies.com, AmericanIllustrators.com, Americanillustration.org.
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