Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish was an American illustrator from the ‘Golden Age of Illustration’. Parrish lived from 1870 to 1966 and is best known for his works depicting beautiful women in idealized classical landscapes with deep saturated colors.
Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into a Quaker family and started drawing as a young child. His birth name was actually Frederick, but he later adopted Maxfield as his professional name; it was his grandmother’s maiden name. His father, Stephen Parrish, was an artist as well, and both of his parents supported and encouraged him. In 1884, they went to Europe and introduced him to the old masters. Parrish’s first schooling was in architecture at Haverford College, before studying art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Drexel Institute of Art, Science & Industry. At Drexel, Parrish met Lydia Ambler Austin, with whom he would marry and have four children.
Parrish’s first publications were in the magazines, Harper’s Bazaar and Scribner’s Magazine. His was career really launched after an 1897 commission to illustrate L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose. Arabian Nights soon followed as well as numerous magazine and advertising company commissions. Parrish developed many of his own techniques for making his figures more lifelike. He applied layers of glazing to make his colors appear to glow. To get the glowing effect, he would apply many layers of glaze and pigment over a white canvas to allow natural light to reflect even more off of the paint, reminiscent of the glazing technique used by Leonardo da Vinci. It is said that he developed this technique in the 1890s while suffering from tuberculosis. His colors were so vibrant that the paint color ‘Parrish blue’ was named after him.
Parrish often used the same model, Susan Lewin, for most of his most well-known paintings. He had first employed her as a household assistant to his wife. The two had a lifelong relationship. After the death of his wife, Lydia, Lewin stayed with Parrish and helped take care of him and the household.
Between 1904 and 1910, Parrish had an exclusive contract with Collier’s Magazine that stated that he would only publish his illustrations with them. In the 1920s, Parrish stopped working on illustration commissions to focus on his paintings. In 1931, perhaps due to the onset of the depression, Parrish declared to the press that “I’m done with girls on rocks” and moved on to work on landscapes solely. Although they weren’t as popular as the paintings with women, they still did quite well and kept Parrish and his family very comfortable.
Parrish’s career spanned over 6 decades in which he painted over 900 pieces. Maxfield Parrish died in 1966 at the ripe old age of 95.
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