A tangled weave
Apr. 10th, 2007 12:37 pmThis morning I found an advertisement from Bud Plant Comic Art in my inbox, and one item advertised was an art book called Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists. "Lavishly illustrated with over 400 mostly full color reproductions, this is a definitive collection of Maxfield Parrish's (1870-1966) works.... Also included are numerous examples (100 pages, about 25% of the book) of the work of artists in Parrish's circle, such as Harvey Dunn, John LaGatta, J.C. Leyendecker, Howard Pyle, Jessie Willcox Smith, N.C. Wyeth and others." Reading this casual reference to "Parrish's circle" -- including Pyle and Wyeth, no less! -- made me realize that I don't know much about Parrish, although I used to see prints of his work all around when I was in college and was entranced by his limpid skies in particular.
So I googled "maxfield parrish", and the first page I looked at was a fascinating short biography and semi-technical analysis of his artwork. The biography doesn't really illuminate the idea of a circle of artists around Parrish (the American Imagists?), although it does mention that he once tried to study under Pyle but was told that he was already too advanced to learn anything from that master. But the really interesting thing the page talks about is how Parrish's technique was aimed at the reproduction techniques used in the magazines of the day. He apparently would actually paint the cyan, magenta, and yellow layers separately, and there is an unfinished painting on the page that shows that he was working on a cyan layer when he gave up on it. There's also a link to another page that shows his famous painting "Daybreak" -- "an immediate and staggering success. More lissome, lightly clothed lasses in mock-classical settings followed. The public couldn't get enough" -- under a series of different lighting conditions that radically change the coloring of the painting. It's quite astonishing.
This is all interesting enough, and raises all kinds of questions I'm eager to pursue. However, the other thing that caught my eye on this page was that in 1910 Parrish illustrated a book called A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales. Further googling discovered that this is a combination of two different collections of Greek myths written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now, the thing that jumped out at me was of course the word Tanglewood, which is the name of our editorial column in Chunga. How did Tanglewood Tales come to be the name of a book of Greek myths? Well, according to Wikipedia, 'Hawthorne wrote the book while renting a small cottage in the Berkshires, a sort of inland Newport, Rhode Island for the wealthy industrialists of the Gilded Age. The owner of the cottage, a railroad baron, renamed the cottage "Tanglewood" in honour of the book written there. Later, a nearby mansion was renamed Tanglewood and hosted concerts which continue to this day.' Which would appear to explain why I saw the name Tanglewood on a map of Massachusetts when
ron_drummond and I were planning our trip into the Berkshires. Still doesn't explain where Hawthorne got the name of his book from.
More research necessary, unless you know the answer.
So I googled "maxfield parrish", and the first page I looked at was a fascinating short biography and semi-technical analysis of his artwork. The biography doesn't really illuminate the idea of a circle of artists around Parrish (the American Imagists?), although it does mention that he once tried to study under Pyle but was told that he was already too advanced to learn anything from that master. But the really interesting thing the page talks about is how Parrish's technique was aimed at the reproduction techniques used in the magazines of the day. He apparently would actually paint the cyan, magenta, and yellow layers separately, and there is an unfinished painting on the page that shows that he was working on a cyan layer when he gave up on it. There's also a link to another page that shows his famous painting "Daybreak" -- "an immediate and staggering success. More lissome, lightly clothed lasses in mock-classical settings followed. The public couldn't get enough" -- under a series of different lighting conditions that radically change the coloring of the painting. It's quite astonishing.
This is all interesting enough, and raises all kinds of questions I'm eager to pursue. However, the other thing that caught my eye on this page was that in 1910 Parrish illustrated a book called A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales. Further googling discovered that this is a combination of two different collections of Greek myths written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now, the thing that jumped out at me was of course the word Tanglewood, which is the name of our editorial column in Chunga. How did Tanglewood Tales come to be the name of a book of Greek myths? Well, according to Wikipedia, 'Hawthorne wrote the book while renting a small cottage in the Berkshires, a sort of inland Newport, Rhode Island for the wealthy industrialists of the Gilded Age. The owner of the cottage, a railroad baron, renamed the cottage "Tanglewood" in honour of the book written there. Later, a nearby mansion was renamed Tanglewood and hosted concerts which continue to this day.' Which would appear to explain why I saw the name Tanglewood on a map of Massachusetts when
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
More research necessary, unless you know the answer.