“Morning”
“Morning”, often referred to as “Morning (Spring)”, or simply “Spring”, is a lovely and dreamy oil on panel painting by the American artist and illustrator, Maxfield Parrish, from 1922. This image was featured as the cover illustration for the Easter edition of Life Magazine, on April 6, 1922. This issue, number 2057, sold for 15 cents.
In this piece, Parrish depicts his signature “girls on rocks” theme that his art was known and loved for. The woman featured is sitting on a rock in the high altitude of some ethereal and majestic mountains. Her hair is tied back, and she is wearing a white wrap with a golden tassel for a belt, reminiscent of the Classical Greek style. She gazes longingly up towards the sky, which features white, billowy clouds against a bright blue sky.
Parrish painted in this style between the 1890s and 1931. After the onset of the American Great Depression, there was a change in what art the public wanted, and Parrish shifted to landscapes. Like his other pieces, there is a Utopian feeling to this piece that makes the viewer long for such a place. This is in part to the beauty of his subject, the warm and contrasting gold and blue colors, and his own glazing technique that made his paintings appear to glow.
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.
“Morning” is currently in a private collection. Period piece prints have sold and are available to purchase through art auctions online.
For more on Maxfield Parrish, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
