The Maxfield Parrish Museum Collection

The Maxfield Parrish Museum opened after art dealer Alma Gilbert purchased “The Oaks” in 1978 and was subsequently managed by Gilbert for eight years. In 1985, the Maxfield Parrish Museum closed and in 1986 a portion of the collection was donated to the Brandywine Museum of Art. Other noted donations made from this closure include those made to the American Precision Museum in Vermont.

Painter and illustrator Frederick “Maxfield” Parrish 1870-1966 was born the son of painter and etcher Stephen Parrish 1848-1938 and Elizabeth Bancroft, who were part of the Philadelphia Quaker community. Parrish studied architecture at Haverford College and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. As a student, Parrish won recognition for his highly developed skills in designing posters and advertisements. Parrish also attended lectures at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry given by Howard Pyle, 1853-1911. Pyle believed Parrish was beyond his teaching capabilities and did not take him on as a student. During this time, Parrish met his future wife Lydia Ambler Austin 1872-1953. Though Parrish established a successful career in Philadelphia, around 1898 he assisted in building his home “The Oaks” in Plainfield, New Hampshire. There, Parrish and Lydia raised four children, John Dillwyn, 1904-1969, Maxwell Jr., 1906-1983, Stephen, 1909-1995, and Jean, 1911-2004.

Maxfield Parrish, as he came to be known professionally, enjoyed a successful career in illustration, design, and mural painting that spanned more than half a century. He produced highly engaging images of fantasy, crafted through a combination of skillful painting techniques and symmetrically balanced compositional arrangements. Parrish notably referenced photographic images of staged props, models, and elements in the surrounding New Hampshire landscapes in his work. Many of the works Parrish created for books and magazines throughout his career utilized the figure Sue Lewin 1889-1978. Lewin was initially hired to assist Lydia Parrish with childcare. By 1904 Lewin began posing for Parrish and continued to do so until 1934, when Parrish turned exclusively to painting landscapes.

Parrish illustrated books such as: Mother Goose in Prose (1897), written by L. Frank Baum, The Arabian Nights (1909), and The Golden Treasury (1911), a Francis Turner Palgrave’s anthology. Parrish’s final book illustrations were for The Knave of Hearts (1925) by Louise Saunders. Parrish created numerous illustrations and advertisements that appeared in periodicals, including Collier’s, The Century, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Life. For The Century, Parrish collaborated with writer Edith Wharton to illustrate her series of articles, “Italian Villas and Their Gardens” that appeared in the magazine between 1903-1904 and in book form in 1904. Parrish also enjoyed a lucrative arrangement with the House of Art to publish reproductions of his paintings, among which Daybreak (1922), became the most popular art print of the twentieth century. At the heigh of Parrish’s popularity, his paintings and designs appeared on posters, playing cards, boxes, and advertisements such as those for Crane’s Chocolates, and more notably his calendar advertisement work for Edison Mazda Lamps. Mural work by Parrish includes work for: the Girls Dining Room of Philadelphia’s Curtis Publishing Company, the Masque and Wig Club at the University of Pennsylvania, the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the Sherman Hotel Bar in Chicago, and several non-corporate commissioners.

In 1925, about one in four American households owned a Parrish art print. Public interest in Parrish’s work dropped circa 1940, and he was not “rediscovered” until circa 1960. Parrish passed away in 1966, having ended his artistic career six years earlier due to arthritis. Both Bennington College in 1961, and New York’s Gallery of Modern Art in 1964, presented exhibitions of Parrish’s work preceding the end of his professional career and life. All in all, Parrish was a highly influential figure in American art who inspired many artists, including illustrators Norman Rockwell and pop artist Andy Warhol.