A Fantasist First and Foremost, Maxfield Parrish’s Retrospective at a Palm Beach Mansion Is Aptly Timed for America’s New Golden Age

‘The Ethereal Worlds of Maxfield Parrish’Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, 1 Whitehall Way, Palm Beach, FloridaJanuary 21, 2025 until April 20, 2025Maxfield Parrish, once the most popular artist in America, is now a name associated unfailingly with kitsch. Yet Parrish’s own estimation of himself was as a “popular” artist, and said as much in an interview towards the end of his life. He straddled numerous genres but stayed strongly rooted in illustration. His drawings for “Mother Goose” and “The Wizard of Oz” are rightfully beloved classics. Parrish carved out his own idiosyncratic niche in American art history. As anyone who has been charmed by his imposing mural at the King Cole bar at Midtown Manhattan’s Saint Regis Hotel, Parrish endures. A retrospective opens tomorrow at Palm Beach’s Flagler Museum — once the Gilded Age estate of Florida Industrialist Henry Flagler — now a heritage site and museum. It’s an oddly appropriate venue for Parrish, who was one of the most spectacularly successful illustrators and painters of his day. Maxfield Parrish, ‘Reverie,’ 1916, oil on panel. Courtesy of the National Museum of American IllustrationVanderbilt and Hearst both collected him, and his paintings graced the toniest venues across the world. His painting for the King Cole bar was commissioned by John Jacob Astor for the Knickerbocker Hotel, where it was was installed in 1906, and the face of King Cole was said to be modeled after Astor. The illustration was later moved to the Saint Regis, where it still graces the bar front and center, after a costly restoration in 2013. Maxfield Parrish, ‘Plainfield Town Hall Stage Set – Center Stage Backdrop Study,’ 1916. Courtesy of the National Museum of American IllustrationDespite his commissioned works of fine art, he was perfectly happy to use his talents for magazines and children’s book. This is strongly reflected in the works selected for the Flagler show, which feature both his commercial illustrations and the works one would consider fine painting. There is a sampling of his magnificent talent for Storybook pictures, like his drawing of Little Jack Horner from “Mother Goose.” There is also his paean to American farmers, “Dawn Milking Time,” showing a young dairy farmer standing on a hillock in a mist filled dawn that could be a classic cover of the Saturday Evening Post. There is his wonderfully comical drawing of Jack and the Giant, reminding us that humor was an important and constant element in his work, even his most serious paintings. Maxfield Parrish, ‘Cascades (Quiet Solitude),’ 1959, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the National Museum of American IllustrationThere are also several straightforward landscapes, like “June Skies,” which is nonetheless suffused with his signature color. His study for a theatre backdrop, “Plainfield Town Hall Stage Set,” shows that at his most restrained he was on par with the other serious landscape painters of his era. Parrish was a fantasist first and foremost, however. Even in landscapes you can sense when he pushes into full-blown flights into arcadian dreaminess. “Cascades” features waterfalls tumbling into a glade, but rendered in such a dappled and ornamental way — the knottiness of the mighty oak trees are wonderfully overblown — that it is a scene worthy of Tolkien. Then there are examples of his most popular, quasi mythological works, recalling his most popular works “Daybreak” or “Ecstasy.” “Reveries” features an Art Nouveau nymph, head tilted pensively on a swing, suspended from an impossibly picturesque golden tree, all set against a cerulean lake and sky. She seems suspended from an exaggerated height, however, a conceit to perspective that is nearly surreal. The Henry Morrison Flagler Museum at Palm Beach. LittleOrphanDani via Wikimedia Commons CC4.0Yet reality isn’t the aim here. Parrish thrived due to his ability to create aspirational classicism, a hazily reconstructed, quasi historical Hellenism strained through the sensibility of Cecil B. DeMille. Parrish enchanted America by harnessing its talent for endless aesthetic reinvention, one that grasped at essences and wasn’t too concerned with the rigors of historical accuracy. He reimagined America as a self-invented, other worldly arcadia, and Americans loved it. There is also no questioning the absolute splendor of Parrish’s technique. Nothing pops like a Parrish, his colors so luminous and jewel-toned that the eye literally boggles when setting upon them. Not since Lapis Lazuli was ground for the ultramarine robes of Medieval Madonnas have such blues been created (the famous “Parrish Blue”). The interior of the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel at Midtown Manhattan, featuring Maxfield Parrish’s depiction of Old King Cole behind the bar. Adam Jones via Wikimedia Commons CC2.0This unreally vibrant palette was the result of a painstaking layering process of only four colors known as CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black). Together with layers of glaze, applied like the surface of a lacquered box, Parrish created his almost photorealistic levels of luminous detail. This technique is central to the appeal he achieves when applied to his most fantastical scenes. He creates scenes so unabashedly pretty the mind is inclined to disbelieve them, and the incredibly meticulous detail and color manages to sell their unreality as nearly real. It was this ingenious combination of the extremely technical with the whimsical that makes the Parrish style. With his peculiarly American and generous combination of both low and high, his skillful borrowing of influences from every quarter, Parrish became one of the beloved artists in American history. At his height, his art graced the walls one in every four households in America. This exhibit at the Flagler shows us why. Correction: The Knickerbocker Hotel was the original location of Maxfield Parrish’s painting of Old King Cole. An earlier version misstated the picture’s history.

A Fantasist First and Foremost, Maxfield Parrish’s Retrospective at a Palm Beach Mansion Is Aptly Timed for America’s New Golden Age

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