Maxfield Parrish - CASCADES (QUIET SOLITUDE)

 

Maxfield Parrish
1870 - 1966

CASCADES (QUIET SOLITUDE)

signed Maxfield Parrish l.r., also inscribed Cascades / Maxfield Parrish / 1959 on the reverse
oil on panel
23 by 18 1/2 in.
(58.4 by 47 cm)

In 1930, Maxfield Parrish turned away from images of beautiful young gods and goddesses and whimsical vignettes of medieval revelry, and began painting his "beloved" landscapes, exclusively.  A 1931 newspaper article entitled "Maxfield Parrish Will Discard 'Girl-on the-Rock' Idea in Art," quoted the artist as saying: "I'm done with girls on rocks.  I have painted them for thirteen years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more.  That's the peril of the commercial art game.  It tempts a man to repeat himself....Magazine and art editors – and the critics, too—are always hunting for something new, but they don't know what it is.  They guess at what the public will like and, as we all do, they guess wrong about half the time.  My present guess is that landscapes are coming in for magazine covers, advertisement and illustrations.  Shut-in people need outlets for their imaginations.  They need windows for their minds.  Artists furnish them" (quoted in Maxfield Parrish: A Retrospective, San Francisco, 1995, p. 15).  Parrish determined that it would be through his landscapes that he would be taken seriously as an artist, and might transcend his status as an illustrator.

Cascades, featuring a fantastical rocky glen flanked by two massive tree trunks was published in 1962 by Brown and Bigelow (as Quiet Solitude), a calendar company in St. Paul, Minnesota, for whom Parrish worked from 1936 to 1961.  He agreed to the partnership only after finishing his last calendar for General Electric and with the understanding that he would be allowed to paint his landscapes.  Parrish's skill as a colorist is immediately apparent in Cascades, in which each element of the scene is rendered with the calculated precision and intense palette which had become integral to his artistic vocabulary.  In addition to capturing the light-drenched gorge and inky shadows, he creates a kaleidoscope effect in the opalescent waters in the foreground.  The result is a rich tapestry of deep forest green and cobalt blue, punctuated by hues of orange and aquamarine.  However, he has carefully balanced these high-key colors with the rich browns and sienas of the arching tree trunks and the rocky crags in the foreground.  This range of color is attributable to two influential trips Parrish made in 1901 and 1903, first to Arizona where he glimpsed the dramatic effects of southwestern sunrises and sunsets, and then to Italy where he diligently recorded the low-key colors of the craggy terrain.  For Parrish, nature was infinitely complex, reflected in his meticulous painting style; and he strove to transcribe its transient beauty in his work: "those qualities which delight us in nature—the sense of freedom, pure air and light, the magic of distance, and the saturated beauty of color, must be convincingly stated and take the beholder to the very spot" (Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 175).  His artistic process was labor-intensive; he carefully painted colorful glazes over a white ground, to give the impression of light shining through the hues.  The initial impact is powerful and immediate; though closer examination reveals a layered, delicate quality.

Concurrent with this return to landscape as his primary subject, Parrish began to work in a smaller format, abandoning the 30 by 24 inch size he employed in the early 1930s, and adopting the 22 ½ by 18 inch format.  According to Coy Ludwig, "his smaller paintings seemed to him more aesthetically successful than his larger ones.  It was a wise decision, for his brilliant, enamel-like surfaces and intricately detailed subjects called for the smaller size" (Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 177).