Parrish, Maxfield

Parrish, Maxfield, 1870–1966, American painter and illustrator, b. Philadelphia; pupil of Howard Pyle. He is known for his original and highly decorative posters, magazine covers, and book illustrations and for his murals, including decorations for the building of the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia. His glowing colors, especially the blues, are characteristic. He illustrated Washington Irving's "Knickerbocker" History of New York, Eugene Field's Poems of Childhood, The Arabian Nights, Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age and Dream Days, and many other volumes.

Bibliography

See biographies by P. W. Sheeter (1973) and C. Ludwig (1973); S. Yount et al., Maxfield Parrish, 1870–1966 (1999).

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Parrish, (Frederick) Maxfield

(born July 25, 1870, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died March 10, 1966, Plainfield, N.H.) U.S. illustrator and painter. Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Drexel Institute of Art, he was the highest-paid commercial artist and muralist in the U.S. by the 1920s. He is best known for his depictions of fantasy landscapes populated by attractive young women. He used meticulously defined outlines and intricately detailed natural backgrounds; his unusual colours, especially the luminous “Parrish blue,” give his pictures a dreamlike quality. Though his popularity declined in the late 1930s, appreciation of his work revived in the 1960s and '70s.

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Parrish, (Frederick) Maxfield (1870–1966) illustrator, painter; born in Philadelphia. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Howard Pyle (1891–93), later joining the well-known art colony in Cornish, N.H. (1898). He became famous for his technically skilled and highly decorative illustrations, bookcovers, murals, and best-selling color prints like Daybreak (1920). Retiring from illustration in the 1930s, he spent the rest of his life painting rural landscapes, reproduced on calendars and greeting cards.