Sold – Maxfield Parrish Concepts Some of His Most Enduring Images

Young Parrish began his career in the mid-1890s as an illustrator and provided artwork for stories, covers and articles to the well-known magazines of the day like Century, Harper’s and Metropolitan. He began working with the publisher R.H. Russell and Son of New York late in the decade, and by 1900 received the plums of providing the illustrations for “Mother Goose in Prose” and Russell’s new version of “Knickerbocker’s History of New York”; the iIllustations were in monotone. Later that year Russell hired Parrish to provide illustrations for a work by Richard Le Gallienne, one of his authors, who was writing an article entitled “Once Upon a Time.”

But 1900 would prove to be a difficult year for Parrish, as he contracted tuberculosis and then suffered a nervous breakdown. He went to a sanitorium in the Adirondacks to benefit from the dry air of Saranac Lake, but found the cold in the winter of 1900-1901 was too much for him and his condition  made it hard to work. However, by the new year of 1901, he began to develop concepts and techniques he would utilize to great effect throughout his career; by year’s end he was a new man, at least in an artistic sense.

At the start of that epochal year, he wrote his publisher about his assignment, saying he loved to illustrate children’s subjects. He showed just how his work would take into consideration the child’s imagination and point of view, and detailed some specific ideas he had for pictures; in time he would create these very pictures. Autograph Letter Signed, Saranac Lake, N.Y., February 5th, 1901. “As to the subject of my contribution to your portfolio, I would like to make a picture called, let us say, “Once upon a time”, of a huge giant in a vast dark wood to whom has presented himself a tiny knight with hero on horseback. Not a very exciting description to be sure, but I think it could be made interesting. Or any fairy tale subject would do – “Jack” of beanstalk & giant killer frame. I am particularly fond of taking children’s subjects of the fairy tale kind, and treating them just as seriously & with just as much faith, as far as the artistic rendering is concerned, as one would see “Landing of Columbus” or Sheridan’s Ride”. By what process are these to be reproduced? I am rather shy of color, for my things are always ruined in reproduction when I do them for color.”

Parrish decided to spend the 1901-2 winter in Arizona for his health, and this offered the opportunity for him to illustrate for Century a series of articles on the Southwest. The desert’s stark and beautiful colors, the brilliant blue of the sky, the intense light and great sweep of the space, changed his mind about color. And the Parrish that left Arizona in 1902 had become a technicolor Parrish, with color being the most important part of his work. Moreover, in Arizona Parrish turned from ink to paint, from pen to brush, from drawings to oils. Maxfield Parrish, illustrator became Maxfield Parrish, painter.

Le Gallienne’s “Once Upon a Time”, with Parrish’s illustrations, appeared in the December 1904 issue of Metropolitan Magazine. And as for the ideas he articulated in this letter, he later painted Jack and the Beanstalk, giants, knights, and in fact innumerable fairy tale subjects.