American Precision Museum

Maxfield Parrish: Machinist, Artisan, Artist American Precision Museum

In 1923, The Boston Globe announced to a surprised American public that the country's most beloved painter was also a mechanic. Maxfield Parrish, "the painter of those brilliant landscape-s creator of the atmospheric fantasy of fairyland," had a work shop that would be the envy of many a machinist, and claimed to be not an artist who loved machinery, but a machinist who painted pictures. Parrish's audience, of course, knew him only as a painter and illustrator. At the very beginning of his career, in the eighteen-nineties, new printing processes had just made mass-produced color illustration practical. By that time, also, the American people had achieved a standard of literacy and a thirst for culture that created a vast market for books and magazines In the early years of the twentieth century, Maxfield Parrish illustrations graced the covers of magazines such as Life and Collier's, decorated lavishly-produced children's books, hung over millions of mantles, and advertised products ranging from Jell-O to Fisk Tires. While he was certainly the most popular working artist in America, Parrish also received recognition from art critics and collectors. All the while, he continued to spend his afternoons in the machine shopThe exhibition "Maxfield Parrish: Machinist, Artisan, Artist" offers a glimpse into Parrish's painting studio and his machine shop, and explores the connections between the two. Different forms of creativity often require the same skills: both art work and machine work require an ability to conceive a design and then carry it out with precision. For Parrish there were more direct connections as well, when items created in the shop appeared in the paintings. Even as he painted, he employed a highly technical method. Together, artistry and technology created "the atmospheric fantasy of fairyland" in the work of Maxfield Parrish. (This Kindle edition is a reprint of an APM Exhibit Catalog, originally published 1995.)