Parrish Skies

By Eilene Lyon

My Colorado home experiences exquisite sunrises and sunsets on a regular basis. It takes only a few clouds to add rich hues to our morning and evening skies. Whenever I find startlingly deep cyan set off with billowing cumulous clouds in a vibrant pink-orange glow, I’ve taken to calling them “Maxfield Parrish Skies.” Though it may be some of his many imitators I’m calling to mind.

I found this book about Parrish in the local antique store for $12, so now I have a small representative sample of his work. (It isn’t an antique, of course, having been published in 1999.) The Cutlers have included many lesser known works, in addition to his best known, best-selling art print, “Daybreak” (1922).

Maxfield Parrish was born Frederick Maxfield Parrish, to an anomalous Quaker artist, Stephen M. Parrish and Elizabeth Bancroft, in 1870. (Quakers generally frowned on art as a career.) Fred began learning his artistic skills from his father at an early age, and took to emulating Stephen in nearly every respect. Stephen appropriated his mother’s maiden name of Maxfield as his middle name, though born without one. Fred eventually dropped his first name entirely at age 24.

Maxfield Parrish spent two years in Europe with his parents, observing the old masters. He studied architecture at Haverford College, but dropped out. He opted to become an illustrator, rather than attempting to make a living in the rarified air of fine arts. But his drafting and painting skills elevated him far above the rank and file of illustrators.

His most prolific years were 1894–1925. He started out with commissions for posters and product advertising, then went on to book illustrations. The first of these was L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose. He produced art for the country’s most popular magazine of the time, Century, for nearly two decades.

Parrish’s style was painstaking. It involved building up layers of color and varnish–up to 60 layers in total. He often used photographs in place of sketches, and he had his models dressed in dreamy, period costumes. The results were luminous fantasies.

Unlike many fine artists whose output numbered in the thousands of canvases, Parrish completed just 850 works. Many of them were on wood paneling, and therefore more prone to deterioration. Some of his works no longer exist.

Parrish was one of the earliest artists to develop contracts that gave his customers one-time-use permission for his illustrations. It greatly enhanced his earnings. As he put it, “I sell it four times!…for a greeting card, then a calendar, and next an art print, and then finally I sell the painting.”

Though “Daybreak” was his best seller, Parrish’s finest work is considered to be an 18-panel piece called “Florentine Fete” (1913), with each panel over 10 ft. high. The work was commissioned by the Curtis Publishing Co. for the girls’ dining room in Philadelphia. Several of them are reproduced in this book.

Parrish painted until arthritis became debilitating at age 90. He died in 1966 at age 95, survived by four children (by his wife, Lydia Austin), and his partner, Susan Lewin.

Maxfield Parish at Find a Grave

Source:

Cutler, Laurence S. and Judy A.G. Cutler. Maxfield Parrish. New York: Gramercy Books/Random House Value Publishing, Inc., 1999.