100 Years of Illustration

Maxfield Parrish: An Appreciation

Maxfield Parrish had studied at Haverford College and the Philadelphia College of Art prior to his invitation by Howard Pyle to study with him. Parrish arrived already a competent illustrator with a substantial body of work and accomplishment. Among members of this freshman class were the very gifted Violet Oakley, Jessie Wilcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green. Henry C. Pitz, in his excellent book, The Brandywine Tradition isn’t clear about the dates involved but I would venture to guess the time as to be somewhere in the years from 1896 to 1899. See Howard Pyle: An Appreciation. Click on images to enlarge.

“Through the night she calls to men, luring them down to their death,” is the illustration for Phoebus on Halzaphron which appeared in Scribner’s Monthly Magazine for August 1901. The influence of Howard Pyle is obvious in the gesture, sky, sea, and voluminous folds of her flowing garment.

Illustration from “Keats’s Poem to Autumn” which appeared in The Century Magazine for November 1904.

This is pure Maxfield Parrish. No one else painted like this. It was almost like using a sketch for a mural to illustrate a magazine piece.
I think Rockwell Kent owed much of the drama in his work to Parrish’s posturing characters. I very much admire both of these men for their genius in thoroughly commanding the media with which they worked, but the grand gestures and poses seem to annoy as much as the rest of the illustration pleases.

The tile for this illustration is “ I am sick of being a princess,” and it appeared in The Century Magazine for December 1904. It is typical Parrish as illustrator of Edith Wharton’s Italian Gardens with two very stiff humans pasted on to a landscape sketch.

This is entitled “Sandman” and appeared in The Century Magazine for October 1905. It’s probably from the other side of Parrish’s brain, the one dedicated to the illustration of children’s books. Pyle and any number of his students, N.C. Wyeth comes to mind immediately, could have done equally as well if not better.

By August of 1907 Parrish had created another of his trademark subjects, the not-quite androgynous nude, seen here amidst leaves and brush about to be devoured by gnats and mosquitoes in front of a full harvest moon and Grecian temple. From Scribner’s Monthly Magazine for August 1907, illustrating lines from Wordsworth: “. . . than Naiad by the side / Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere /
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.”

The jewels amidst these assignments are, in my opinion, two paintings Parrish did to illustrate “The Waters of Venice” by Arthur Symons, as the lead article in Scribner’s Monthly Magazine for April 1906. This man could see, and he could paint, as well as anyone of his contemporaries. It’s no mystery that he did the things he did, the heavy-handed schmalz and pretty pictures. By this time our popular press was taken over by images of saccharine sweetness and dream landscapes.

Next: Elizabeth Shippen Green

More Maxfield Parrish

These first four illustrations are from a special section devoted to Parrish's work entitled "The Great Southwest" published in Century Magazine for November of 1902. There were seven in all, but I think these are the best to consider. Click on images to enlarge.

This is called View in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado commonly known today as simply The Grand Canyon. I'm guessing that it was drawn from a large format black-and-white photograph such as an 8 x 10, and then painted either on site or from color notations and sketches made on site. I know from my visits to the bookshop at the Grand Canyon that there were a couple of brothers who seemed to be resident photographers and I'm guessing that their work was available to Parrish.

Speaking of working from photos, these two riders and their horses look as if they were snapshots and part of a montage. There's precious little painting going on, it would seem, and that that little white – and possibly gloved – hand poking just above the horizon and silhouetted against the blue sky seems totally out of place. Where were the editors on that one?

This looks like the skies we used to see up in Sonoma County, California. It's entitled, "Water let in on a field of Alfalfa."

I don't understand how this got into the mix, what with the gratuitous legend. It's a meticulous rendering and could stand alone with just a line or two in type below the image. Bill Sachs reminds me a lot of Ansel Adams.

I don't have a title for this one, which appeared in the November 1904 issue of Century Magazine. It's a lovely piece and looks so much like the Southwest must have been before the railroad and commercial developers fouled the nest.

This is typical of Parrish's storybook style. It's from "The Desert," which appeared in the December 1902 issue of Scribner's Monthly Magazine.

Maxfield Parrish: Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens - 3

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Villa d'Este, Tivoli, near Rome.

The Pool at Villa d'Este. A recognizably languid Parrish figure lounges at its side.

Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore.

In the Gardens of Isola Bella, Lago Maggiore.

Villa Cicogna, Lago Maggiore.

Villa Pliniana, Lake Como.

on the grounds of the Villa Scassi in 1907, quite different from the romantic quality of Parrish's illustration. This is what made him so great even if this is not up to the quality of the other illustrations in the book. (For one thing, that statue is leading us nowhere.) However, it is the magic of Parrish and his great sense of design and color that separates him from his contemporaries, not to mention the enormous challenge to make interesting designs out of such complicated subjects.

I've seen prints of some of these subjects for sale on the Web at reasonable prices. The original copies of the book are very expensive and are listed at $500 to $2,500 at abebooks.com

 

Maxfield Parrish: Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens - 2

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Boboli Gardens, Florence.

Villa Gamberaia in Tuscany.

Villa Gori, near Siena.

Villa Vicobello, near Siena.

Villa Medici, Rome.

Villa Chigi, Rome.

 

Maxfield Parrish: Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens

Click on the image to enlarge.

By way of disclaimer I must remind you (as if it isn't obvious) that I'm not an academic, nor an English major, and if I've read Edith Wharton or seen richly produced films based on her novels, I can't remember anything of any consequence. I would hazard a guess that she was in her time an authority on the subject of Italian villas and gardens as in later years Julia Child became an authority on the subject of French cuisine. In Wharton's time the area around Florence was filled with young college women from the United States who came to have their sculpted wax sketches pointed and finished life-size in marble by the patient and often grateful stone masons and artisans of Carrara and adjacent quarries. These sculptures were used to grace public libraries and civic structures throughout North America.

By November of 1903 when these ongoing articles were published in The Century Magazine Wharton was already famous for her novels (that would eventually number at least 40 in all) and Parrish was acknowledged as one of Howard Pyle's best pupils. I'm going to ignore Wharton's prose and just post visuals of Parrish's masterpieces because when you, as perhaps an illustrator, contemplate the enormous pressure on him to supply illustrations to satisfy this grande dame of letters and his august client Ted De Vinne,  1828-1914, the finest American printer of his day whose Century Magazine was appreciated for its good design and production.

Bruce Watson in the July 1999 issue of Smithsonian describes Maxfield Parrish as "a short, puckish man with piercing blue eyes," who "painted the stuff dreams are made of. His trademarks were lush gardens, ecstatic women and his famous 'Parrish blue,' the color skies must surely be in any Eden worth the name." The photo, above, is the property of the Dartmouth College Library, and a short biography is provided by the Alma Gilbert Gallery of Plainfield, New Hampshire.

Edith Wharton's biography, courtesy of the Gonzaga University's website devoted to her.

This is Edith Wharton in 1905 at The Mount, her very own famous estate and formal gardens.

This is the Villa Campi, near Florence. Click on the image to enlarge.