DECEMBER 2019

Happy Holidays to all Maxfield Parrish fans

December means winter, and winter means snow. Parrish painted winter scenes for 22 years, from 1941 to 1963, for the calendars published by Brown & Bigelow.  Although we realize that many of you can simply look out the living room window now and see the real thing, we have chosen to show one of Parrish’s best snow scenes in this 1949 painting depicting the Austin Farm on Lang Road, Plainfield, New Hampshire. Parrish gave it the name “Hilltop Farm, Winter”.

When Brown & Bigelow published their calendar in 1952 with this illustration of a farmhouse located across the valley from Parrish’s home “The Oaks”, they gave it the name “Lights of Welcome”.

In keeping with the Holiday spirit, MP created this precisely drawn pen & ink template for Century Magazine for them to publish a poem by Ednah Proctor Clarke as part of their December 1898 issue.

Despite the trend towards warmer winters, there were some years in the early 2000’s when there was some great snowfall at “The Oaks”

This is myself appropriately bundled up for the outdoors during one such glorious winter.

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In this day and age of political and economic uncertainty and discord, it is refreshing to find the art auction markets active and flourishing. Witness these four hugely important Parrish paintings which appeared at auction in November. I have enjoyed helping the auction houses of Christie’s and Sotheby’s with the background and provenance (ownership) information for these four paintings.  See below for the results of one auction, which demonstrates that the Parrish art market is alive and well, and that important MP originals with solid provenances will quickly sell.

The Millpond was done in 1945 and appeared as the Brown & Bigelow summer calendar for 1948. Sold at the Sotheby’s auction November 19th for $2,420,000, which was far, far above the high pre-auction estimate of $800,000.

Cleopatra was done in 1917 for use as the Crane’s Chocolate Candy box top decoration. Sold at Sotheby’s for $2,300,000, which again was way above the high pre-auction estimate of $1,200,000.

The study for a poster for Scribner’s Magazine was early in Parrish’s career, in 1897. Even this relatively minor Parrish study sold for $225,000, almost double its pre-auction estimate of $120,000.

Aucassin Seeks For Nicolette  was used as the frontispiece in color for the July 1903 issue of Scribner’s Magazine.  And finally, this painting was also successfully sold at Sotheby’s, at a sale price of $350,000

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Original Parrish Art For Sale

We thought our readers might enjoy viewing an interesting example of Parrish’s early art, and which is now available for purchase at a very reasonable price.

An original full sized 1896 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts show poster in an excellent state of preservation.  By “full sized”, the poster dimensions are a huge 28″ x 44″.   This particular poster has been personally autographed by Parrish himself, which is very rarely seen and hard to come by. Ludwig Catalog item #47.

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In regards to our 2019 exhibit of Parrish originals currently for sale, please view all the paintings, watercolors, and drawings by clicking on the Art for Sale link above.

Contact Alma Gilbert for the full catalogue and price list: agilbert@almagilbert.com