Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish

Portrait by Kenyon Cox, 1910

Courtesy National Academy of Design

In 1925, it was estimated that one out of every five American homes had a Maxfield Parrish print on the wall. Maxfield Parrish remains the most reproduced artist in the history of art.

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Maxfield Parrish Signature

Ecstasy by Maxfield Parrish

Ecstasy, 1929

by Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish

American Painter and Illustrator, 1870 - 1966

Maxfield Parrish, MP to his family, friends and close associates, was a unique figure in American art. Not belonging to any particular school, he contributed his own romantic vision to landscapes, gnomes, dragons and lush utopias. His imagination, virtuosity and sheer delight are astonishing.

Hill Top Farm

Hill Top Farm

by Maxfield Parrish

A meticulous craftsman, Parrish's idiosyncratic painting method involved applying numerous layers of thin, transparent oil, alternating with varnish over stretched paper, yielding a combination of great luminosity and extraordinary detail. In his hands, this method gives the effect of a glimpse through a window....except that the scene viewed is from the fairy tale world.

In spite of the long time it took to perfect a painting, Maxfield Parrish was prolific over the course of his productive years, from his children's books of the turn of the century, to his famous prints of androgynous, lounging nudes during the 1920s, to his calendar landscapes of the 1930s through the 1960s.

Hunt Farm by Maxfield Parrish

Hunt Farm

by Maxfield Parrish

The many books he illustrated include Mother Goose in Prose (This work remains one of the most valuable of all the Parrish-illustrated books with a first edition recently fetching between $1,500 and $2,000.), Knickerbocker's History of New York, Nora Smith and Kate Wiggins' Arabian Nights (1909), Wonder Book, Eugene Field's Poems of Childhood(1904), Golden Age and Dream Days, and the crown jewel of Parrish illustrations, Louise Saunders' Knave of Hearts (1925).

The financial gains from these illustrations brought Parrish the income to allow his move away from Philadelphia and into New Hampshire to join his father Stephen and other major artists including Augustus St. Gaudens, Winston Churchill (the American writer), Percy McKay, Frederic Remington and others in the famous artists' colony located betwen Cornish and Plainfield.

Morning by Maxfield Parrish

Morning

by Maxfield Parrish

Part of Maxfield Parrish's success in illustration may have come from his own appreciation of literature. His magnificent home, "The Oaks," located in Plainfield, New Hampshire on a hill overlooking the Connecticut River Valley, contained a wonderfully paneled upstairs library lined with books from top to bottom and with cozy and inviting window seats built for nestling in for a good read.

Maxfield Parrish designed his magnificent home himself. The formal twenty by forty foot music and living room was also lined with his treasured books. In his studio across from the main house, ample shelving had been built to provide the artist with reference and inspirational material. Music, too, was very much a part of his daily life. Musical soirees were held often in the main house. Hints of both his home and his beloved New Hampshire mountains can be found in much of his work.

While book and magazines provided Maxfield Parrish with an enormous public following, it was his prints and calendars that gave him the widest exposure. Hundreds of thousands of images were printed and distributed. It started in 1904 with reproductions of 'Air Castles' (a Ladies' Home Journal cover) and continued through 1920 with prints from previously published sources (advertisements, covers, candy boxes, etc.). His calendars were purchased, used for a year, then his prints were carefully trimmed out and proudly framed.

Much of Maxfield Parrish's early illustrative work was done in black and white. The techniques of color reproduction were quite varied during the period around 1900-1910. It was still an art and individual printers varied widely in their skills. The invention of "process color", whereby artwork is broken down into its component colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow plus black, paved the way for more consistent methodology. Maxfield Parrish, along with many other artists of the time, experimented with the best painting techniques to accommodate these new methods. What Parrish came up with as a result of trying to accommodate the printers' methods and was directly responsible for the unique 'feel' and luminosity of his art.

Eventually, Parrish wanted to create paintings unfettered by commercial considerations. The first such image was Daybreak. It was his masterpiece.

Maxfield Parrish's distinctive ability with color led to the famous "Parrish blue," a unique color prominent in his romantic landscapes. When painting, Parrish mentally assessed the blue component and painted it directly onto a base of white (paper, gesso, etc.) in a thin, transparent glaze. When light was shined on the painting, it would penetrate the transparent glazes, reflect off the white base and mix the final colors in a brilliant manner impossible to achieve with mixed pigments.

Maxfield Parrish died in 1966 at age 95 in his New Hampshire home/studio at The Oaks. His wife died before him in 1953. His mistress and model, Sue Lewin, survived his death.

Find beautiful framed art prints by Maxfield Parrish.

More art by Maxfield Parrish

Daybreak

Daybreak

by Maxfield Parrish

Lute Players

The Lute Players

by Maxfield Parrish

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