Maxfield Parrish (July 25, 1870 – March 30, 1966)

Contentment

1927

Parrish is one of my favorite artists (this is evinced by the little picture of his that hangs constantly at the very bottom of this blog and now at the bottom of this post). While Parrish was in some ways a disciple of Pyle, he nonetheless developed a completely unique and somewhat mathematical theory of composition, which adds a certain ethereal quality to all of his works; I could try to explain all of the elements and steps of his painting process, but I'm afraid I'd exhaust the limits of everyone's patience. I'll just finish by saying that he is one of the few artists who struck me with a thrill when I viewed his paintings. How does he strike you?