Maxfield Parrish
1870 ~ 1966

Maxfield Parrish was one of America's most popular illustrators of his time. His incredible artistic style has continued to enchant new as well as loyal followers. His work has been reproduced in books, calendars, art prints, advertisements and magazines for decades. His paintings are uniquely romantic as well as photo realistic.

Son of the etcher Stephen Parrish and Elizabeth Bancroft Parrish, his early years were filled with exposure to European museums an classical art. Contemporary English artists such as the Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti and Lord Leighton helped influence his artistic vision and contributed heavily to the development of his romantic/fantasy style of painting.

Studying architecture briefly at Harverford College, he soon dropped out to study painting full time and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. While at the Academy, Parrish became familiar with the illustration classes of Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute. As the demand for talented magazine illustrators increased, Parrish made his career choice.

In the 1920's Parrish so dominated the images that America loved that one out of four homes had his world of romantic and fantasy art hanging on their walls.

Well know as a turn of the century poster artist, Parrish retained many of his themes from his children's books. He won a number of national poster contests, the most important of them sponsored by Century magazine in 1887. One of the most famous of all Parrish images, the prize winner, depicts a nude girl seated on the grass, gazing off into the sky. With many commissions in the early 1900's, it was a happy and profitable time for the artist, but soon commercial art gave way to disillusionment.

In an Associated Press interview in 1931, Parrish was quoted as saying "I'm done with girls on rocks. I have painted them for thirteen years and I could paint and sell them for thirteen more. That is the peril of the commercial art game, it tempts a man to repeat himself." After that time all his paintings were landscapes and rural scenes.

With hopes of quitting the commercial art game, his disappointment must have been great, when The Brown and Bigelow Publishing Company used his "personal" landscapes on more than seven and a half million calendars, three million greeting cards and one million prints!

Maxfield Parrish was a modest man who once said of himself: "I am hopelessly commonplace." Modesty is a virtue to be admired, but there are those who would beg to differ with the term "commonplace" with regards to the art of Maxfield Parrish.