Illustration: Maxfield Parrish's Arabian Nights 1909

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books.


Yesterday, I posted on Lotte Reiniger's Prince Achmed, and I thought it might be interesting to see a different approach to the same subject... this time by illustrator Maxfield Parrish.

Parrish was one of the most successful artists of the golden age of illustration. It is said that during the depression, there were more Maxfield Parrish prints hanging on the walls of American homes than there were American homes!

The book I'm featuring today was done early in Parrish's career, but it contains all of the aspects of his style that would make him famous... the electric blues set off of bright sunset oranges, the dramatic lighting effects, the amazingly lifelike natural shapes and patterns contrasted with large flat areas of color, and the total control of the mechanical aspects of offset printing... if you look carefully at the foliage in the image with the urns on either side, you can see that the painting was pasted up from several pieces. Bud Plant's website has an interesting article on how Parrish used the four color process. Check it out.











I'll be posting soon on another of the great American illustrators, N. C. Wyeth.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Edmund Dulac's Tanglewood Tales and Gustaf Tenggren's Wonderbook

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

11.21.08
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