Maxfield Parrish 1870-1966

Estate of the artist
Vose Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts
Private Collection, Connecticut
Richard York Gallery, New York
Private Collection (sold: Christie's, New York, December 4, 1992, lot 162, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

Coy L. Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, pp. 176, 184, 214, illustrated in color
Alma Gilbert, The Make Believe World of Maxfield Parrish and Sue Lewin, San Francisco, 1990, p. 72, illustrated in a 1964 photograph of Parrish in his home 
Alma Gilbert, Maxfield Parrish: The Landscapes, Berkeley, California, 1998, p. 52
Lawrence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler, Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists, Edison, New Jersey, 2004, p. 290, illustrated in color

In 1930, Maxfield Parrish turned away from images of beautiful young gods and goddesses and whimsical vignettes of medieval revelry and began painting his “beloved” landscapes, exclusively.  A 1931 newspaper article entitled “Maxfield Parrish Will Discard ‘Girl-on the-Rock’ Idea in Art,” quoted the artist as saying: “I’m done with girls on rocks.  I have painted them for thirteen years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more.  That’s the peril of the commercial art game.  It tempts a man to repeat himself….Magazine and art editors – and the critics, too—are always hunting for something now, but they don’t know what it is.  They guess at what the public will like and, as we all do, they guess wrong about half the time.  My present guess is that landscapes are coming in for magazine covers, advertisement and illustrations.  Shut-in people need outlets for their imaginations.  They need windows for their minds.  Artists furnish them” (quoted in Maxfield Parrish: A Retrospective, San Francisco, 1995, p. 15).  Parrish determined that it would be through his landscapes that he would be taken seriously as an artist, and transcend his status as an illustrator.

The Old Glen Mill, featuring a New England mill with a fantasy gorge and aqueduct in the distant background, was published in 1954 by Brown and Bigelow, a calendar company in St. Paul, Minnesota, for whom Parrish worked from 1936 to 1961.  Parrish agreed to the partnership based on the understanding that he would be allowed to paint his landscapes.  Parrish’s skill for rendering spatial relationships is immediately apparent in The Old Glen Mill, in which he takes the viewer, step by step, stone by stone, into the middle ground through the mill’s window at left and the rocks at right, toward the aqueduct in the far distance.  In addition to capturing the light-soaked canyon and smooth, stone mill with surreal precision, he creates a kaleidoscopic effect in the shadows.  The result is a rich tapestry of deep forest green and cobalt blue, punctuated by almost fluorescent orange and aquamarine hues.  For Parrish, nature was infinitely complex, reflected in his meticulous painting style; and he strove to transcribe its transient beauty in his work: “those qualities which delight us in nature—the sense of freedom, pure air and light, the magic of distance, and the saturated beauty of color, must be convincingly stated and take the beholder to the very spot” (Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 175).  His artistic process was labor-intensive; he carefully painted colorful glazes over a white ground, to give the impression of light shining through the hues.  The initial impact is powerful and immediate; though closer examination reveals a layered, almost delicate, quality.

Concurrent with this return to landscape as his primary subject, Parrish began to work in a smaller format, abandoning the 30 by 24 inch size he employed in the early 1930s, and adopting the 22 ½ by 18 inch format.  According Coy Ludwig, “his smaller paintings seemed to him more aesthetically successful than his larger ones.  It was a wise decision, for his brilliant, enamellike surfaces and intricately detailed subjects called for the smaller size” (Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 177).