Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), an enduringly interesting artist, occupies a special niche in the history of our nation’s culture. Over the course of a seventy-year career, stretching from the late nineteenth century to the Vietnam era, his illustrations, advertisements, posters, paintings and morals made him one of the most popular artists of his time. By the 1920s Parrish was the highest-paid artist in America. This came about because he turned out an enormous number of highly popular illustrations for books and such magazines as Century, Collier’s, Ladies Home Journal, and Scribner’s. His ingenious manipulation of formal layering and optical effects and his ability to render subjects in compelling, bold lines and flat colors were reflected in images he created under a lucrative contract with Collier’s (1904-1911). Equally acclaimed were illustrations for books like L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose (1897), Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days (1897), and Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and their Gardens (1904). For Eugene Field’s Poems of Childhood he created The Dinkey-Bind (1904), which came to symbolize youthful abandon for generations of viewers. Parrish also created much-admired advertisements, using multi-layered lithographs, and became known as the “businessman with a brush.” His most popular ads included fairy-tale pictures from the D.M. Ferry Seed Company.

Parrish expert Alma Gilbert Smith has it right when she says that “His work has found resonance in the American national psyche and allowed Americans to discover a commonality of thread in each other: the love of dreams, the love of splendor and the love of place within the beautiful country that he depicted.” As she concludes: “Whether Parrish valued immortality or not, passionate appreciation of his art will certainly endure.” See for yourself in the exhibition—and enjoy.

This exhibition was organized by the Trust for Museum Exhibition, Washington, D.C. & International Arts, Memphis, TN.