Frederick+Maxfield+Parrish+(1870-1966)

Frederick Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) was born in Philadelphia into a creative atmosphere. As a youth he was exposed to European art while travelling with his father Stephen, a painter and etcher who regularly exhibited abroad. Originally intending to become an architect, Parrish enrolled at the Drexel Institute but was shortly dismissed by Howard Pyle, who considered him already too advanced to benefit. Winning national recognition in 1895 with a cover design for Harper' s Weekly, he was soon on the way to becoming one of the best-paid American artists. He worked for magazines and advertising, selling literally millions of prints. Experimenting with photomontage, he placed epicene figures in surreal landscapes. He frequently painted from miniature models which he constructed himself, rearranging them in tentative composition. Belying his critics' charge of 'sentimentality', Parrish referred to himself as 'a mechanic who paints'. A rather chance occurrence had been responsible for his shift from a black-and-white to color medium: while recuperating from tuberculosis in the Adirondacks he found the sub-zero winter temperatures continually caused his ink to freeze and so he resorted to pigments thinned with oil. Although a vigorous contributor to the thriving turn-of-the-century poster trade, he 'stood apart from the fashion of Beardsley. Among Parrish's bookplate designs was one for the celebrated actress Ethel Barrymore. He did several large mural commissions based on nursery rhyme themes; 'King Cole' in the bar of the Knickerbocker Hotel was done for a fee of $50,000. However, romantic evocation remained his forte, and indeed his peril, in the commercial art game which demanded repetition of success. tor thirteen years he churned out variant saccharine scenes of a pretty girl on a rock. Now, half a century later, `pop art' promoters have rediscovered this master of the cliche. Parrish continued as an active artist until he was ninety-one.

my soul into the boughs does glide.'
A Golden Treasury of Songs land Lyrics DODD, MEAD & CO 1911

goes answering light!
A Golden Treasury of Songs land Lyrics DODD, MEAD & CO 1911