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Maxfield Parrish
Front Page Article in Antiques & The Arts Weekly!
Griselda. 1920
Journalist Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascoli wrote the headline front-page story on the NMAI’s Maxfield Parrish: The Retrospective exhibition for the noted journal Antiques & The Arts Weekly,
for the June 22nd, 2012 issue. A well-written and compelling
article, it is an incredibly effective primer for viewing the
exhibition, as well as a thorough survey of Parrish’s career for those
interested in learning more about the illustrator, his life, and career.
Maxfield Parrish, c. 1958
The King Samples the Tarts. 1924
The
author aptly summarizes Parrish’s work as “jewel-like and romantic,”
evincing “an exceptional degree of skill as a draftsman” with “precise
and profound” perspective, and his abilities as a colorist were
characterized as “brilliant.”
 Ms.
Mascoli does not focus solely on Parrish’s artwork, but includes
biographical material relating to his development as an
artist-illustrator stemming from his youth in Philadelphia,
education at Haverford College and later for a short stint at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, to his trips to Europe and the
American Southwest whose scenery left a lasting visually manifested
impression on Parrish’s work. Parrish moved in 1898 to Plainfield, New
Hampshire (nearby the Cornish Artists’ Colony) to be near his father
(artist Stephen Parrish) and many other artists of great note (Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, Paul Manship, Frederick Remington, Daniel Chester French,
Thomas Dewing, Kenyon Cox, Everett Shinn, William Zorach, Charles A.
Platt, anon), where “The artist used the landscape and his home above
the Connecticut River with a view of Mount Ascutney in works throughout
his life.”
Morning. 1922
Evening (Winterscape). 1953
She
also expounds upon Parrish’s renowned business sense, writing his
“marketing acumen cannot be underestimated.” With “an innate sense of
what appealed to the market”, his work was “much in demand over the
course of his long career.” Parrish’s association with the important
Curtis Publishing Company, and his work for other periodicals such as Colliers, Harper’s, Scribner’s, Hearst’s, and the Ladies Home Journal
are all cited as are his ever-popular calendars for General Electric’s
Edison Mazda light bulbs, which were estimated by GE’s Director in 1931
as having reached each home in America “nearly 300 times.”
A Florentine Fete. 126" x 207". 1916
Less
attention is given to Parrish’s personal life, but the author describes
Parrish’s companion/mistress and housekeeper Susan Lewin, who appears
in over 160 figures in Parrish’s 10 ½ foot tall Florentine Fete
murals, his magnum opus, originally done for the Curtis Publishing
Ladies’ Dining Room, and now hanging in the NMAI's permanent American
Imagist Collection. The NMAI also has his smallest artwork, an 1
1/2 inch Mother of Pearl button, on which he painted a version of ‘Sheltering Oaks’ for his caretaker’s daughter, who collected buttons.
Tallwood Pearl (Sheltering Oaks). 1955
The full text of the article can be read online on the Antiques and the Arts Weekly site at the following url:
http://antiquesandthearts.com/Antiques/CoverStory/2012-06-19__13-47-46.html.
The exhibition is on display at the NMAI through September 2, 2012.
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Eric Brocklehurst