Description: 1923 MAXFIELD PARRISH DWARF COOK KITCHEN DECOR CHEF LIFE MAGAZINE COVER FC2205 DATE OF THIS ** ORIGINAL ** ITEM: 1923YOU ARE LOOKING AT AN ORIGINAL LIFE MAGAZINE COVER - SO LOOK CAREFULLY AT PHOTO FOR SIZE AND CONDITION! ILLUSTRATOR/ARTIST: Maxfield Parrish (July 25, 1870 – March 30, 1966) was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. His career spanned fifty years and was wildly successful: the National Museum of American Illustration deemed his painting Daybreak (1922) to be the most successful art print of the 20th century. Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to painter and etcher Stephen Parrish and Elizabeth Bancroft. His given name was Frederick Parrish, but he later adopted Maxfield, his paternal grandmother's maiden name, as his middle, then finally as his professional name. He was raised in a Quaker society.? As a child he began drawing for his own amusement, showed talent, and his parents encouraged him. Between 1884 and 1886, his parents took Parrish to Europe, where he toured England, Italy, and France, was exposed to architecture and the paintings by the old masters, and studied at the Paris school of Dr. Kornemann. He attended the Haverford School and later studied architecture at Haverford College for two years beginning in 1888. To further his education in art, from 1892 to 1895 he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under artists Robert Vonnoh and Thomas Pollock Anshutz. After graduating from the program, Parrish went to Annisquam, Massachusetts, where he and his father shared a painting studio. A year later, with his father's encouragement, he attended the Drexel Institute of Art, Science & Industry where he studied with Howard Pyle. Parrish entered into an artistic career that lasted for more than half a century, and which helped shape the Golden Age of illustration and American visual arts. During his career, he produced almost 900 pieces of art including calendars, greeting cards, and magazine covers. Parrish's early works were mostly in black and white. In 1895, his work was on the Easter edition of Harper's Bazaar. He also did work for other magazines like Scribner's Magazine. One of his posters for The Century Magazine was published in Les Maîtres de l'Affiche. He also illustrated a children's book in 1897, Mother Goose in Prose written by L. Frank Baum. By 1900, Parrish was already a member of the Society of American Artists. In 1903, he traveled to Europe again to visit Italy. Parrish took many commissions for commercial art until the 1920s. Parrish's commercial art included many prestigious projects, among which were Eugene Field's Poems of Childhood in 1904, and such traditional works as Arabian Nights in 1909. Books illustrated by Parrish are featured in A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales in 1910, The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics in 1911, and The Knave of Hearts in 1925. Parrish was earning over $100,000 per year by 1910, when homes could be bought for $2,000. In 1910 Parrish received a commission to create 18 panels to go into the Girls Dining Room of the Curtis Publishing Company building, then under construction at 6th and Walnut in Philadelphia. It would take him six years to finish the monumental project. In 1914, before the murals were completed, Curtis commissioned Parrish to design a 15-by-49-foot (4.6 m × 14.9 m) mural for the building lobby. Tiffany Studios constructed a favrile glass mosaic mural titled The Dream Garden, which is now a part of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection. Parrish worked with popular magazines throughout the 1910s and 1920s, including Hearst's and Life. He also created advertising for companies like Wanamaker's, Edison-Mazda Lamps, Colgate and Oneida Cutlery. Parrish worked with Collier's from 1904 to 1913. He received a contract to deal with them exclusively for six years. He also painted advertisements for D.M. Ferry Seed Company in 1916 and 1923, which helped him gain recognition in the eye of the public. His most well-known art work is Daybreak which was produced in 1923. It features female figures in a landscape scene. The painting also has undertones of Parrish blue. In the 1920s, however, Parrish turned away from illustration and concentrated on painting. In his forties, Parrish began working on large murals instead of just focusing on children's books. His works of art often featured androgynous nudes in fantastical settings. He made his living from posters and calendars featuring his works. Beginning in 1904, Susan Lewin (1889-1978) posed for many works, and became Parrish's longtime assistant. From 1918 to 1934, Parrish worked on calendar illustrations for General Electric. In 1931, Parrish declared to the Associated Press, "I'm done with girls on rocks", and opted instead to focus on landscapes. By 1935, Parrish exclusively painted landscapes. Though never as popular as his earlier works, he profited from them. He would often build scale models of the imaginary landscapes he wished to paint, using various lighting setups before deciding on a preferred view, which he would photograph as a basis for the painting (see for example, The Millpond). He lived in Plainfield, New Hampshire, near the Cornish Art Colony, and painted until he was 91 years old. He was also an avid machinist, and often referred to himself as "a mechanic who loved to paint". Parrish's art is characterized by vibrant colors; the color Parrish blue was named after him. He achieved such luminous color through glazing. This process involves applying layers of translucent paint and oil medium (glazes) over a base rendering. Parrish usually used a blue and white monochromatic underpainting. His paintings/illustrations were unique in that they depicted a highly idealized fantasy world that was accessible to the general public. Although you will rarely see a glimpse of that color in reality, he was and still is linked with a particularly bright shade of blue that coated the skies of his landscapes. And it was not an easy task for him to complete. He invented a time-consuming process that involved a cobalt blue base and white undercoating, which he then coated with a series of thin alternating coatings of oil and varnish. When exposed to ultraviolet light, the resins he employed, known as Damar, fluoresce a shade of yellow-green, giving the painted sky its distinctive turquoise tint. Parrish used many other innovative techniques in his paintings. He would take pictures of models in black and white geometric prints and project the image onto his works. This technique allowed for his figures to be clothed in geometric patterns, while accurately representing distortion and draping. Parrish would also create his paintings by taking pictures, enlarging, or projecting objects. He would cut these images out and put them onto his canvas. He would later cover them with clear glaze. Parrish's technique gave his paintings a more three-dimensional feel. The outer proportions and internal divisions of Parrish's compositions were carefully calculated in accordance with geometric principles such as root rectangles and the golden ratio. In this Parrish was influenced by Jay Hambidge's theory of Dynamic Symmetry. Parrish's works continue to influence pop culture. The cover of the 1985 Bloom County cartoon collection Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things comprises elements of Daybreak, The Garden of Allah, and The Lute Players. The poster for The Princess Bride was inspired by Daybreak.[15] In 2001, Parrish was featured in a United States Post Office commemorative stamp series honoring American illustrators, including Parrish. The 1986 television commercial announcing Nestle's Alpine White chocolate bar, entitled "Sweet Dreams," staged live-action representations of Parrish's Ecstasy, Dinky Bird, and Daybreak. The Elton John album Caribou has a Parrish-inspired background. The Moody Blues album The Present uses a variation of the Parrish painting Daybreak for its cover. In 1984, Dali's Car, the British New Wave project of Peter Murphy and Mick Karn, used Daybreak as the cover art of their only album, The Waking Hour. The Irish musician Enya has been inspired by the works of Parrish. The cover art of her 1995 album The Memory of Trees is based on his painting The Young King of the Black Isles. A number of her music videos include Parrish imagery, including "Caribbean Blue". In the 1995 music video "You Are Not Alone", Michael Jackson and his then wife Lisa Marie Presley appear semi-nude in emulation of Daybreak. The Italian singer-songwriter Angelo Branduardi's fourth album La pulce d'acqua of 1977 featured nine inlay full colour print reproductions of painter Mario Convertino's works; one of them is clearly inspired by Parrish's Stars. The original painting of Daybreak sold in 2006 for US$7.6 million. The National Museum of American Illustration claims the largest body of his work in any collection, with sixty-nine works by Parrish including the 1910 Curtis Publishing Company's 18 panel mural commission. Some of his works are located at the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a few at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The San Diego Museum of Art organized and toured a collection of his work in 2005. The American painter Norman Rockwell referred to Parrish as "my idol". In Alan Moore's 32 run comic series Promethea, the cover of Issue #13 was noted by the artist on the cover as "after Parrish", imitating his style. While studying at Drexel, Parrish met his future wife, Lydia Ambler Austin, who was a drawing teacher. The couple were married on June 1, 1895, and moved to Philadelphia. They would go on to have four children together. In 1898, Parrish moved to Plainfield, New Hampshire, with his family and built a home that was later nicknamed "The Oaks".? The home and an adjacent studio were surrounded by beautiful landscapes that inspired Parrish's drawings. Parrish suffered from tuberculosis for a time in 1900.? While sick, he discovered how to mix oils and glazes to create vibrant colors. From 1900 to 1902, Parrish painted in Saranac Lake, New York, and Castle Hot Springs, Arizona, to further recover his health. Parrish's youngest child, Jean, posed for Ecstasy just before leaving for Smith College. Jean was the only child to follow her parents' profession. Parrish developed arthritis. He accepted his last commission in the late 1950s. By 1960 his arthritis prevented him from painting. His last years were spent in a wheelchair. He died on March 30, 1966, in Plainfield, New Hampshire, at the age of 95. SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS/DESCRIPTIVE WORDS: When Maxfield Parrish painted the comical A Dark Futurist in 1923 for Life magazine, he had already established himself as America's leading book and magazine illustrator. His early artwork for children's classics like L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose (1897), Kenneth Grahame's Dream Days (1900), and Eugene Field's Poems of Childhood (1904) popularized his signature atmospheric settings, cobalt blue-and-gold palette, and dreamy figures inhabiting magical worlds. Likewise, his covers for Century, Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, Ladies' Home Journal, Life, and Scribner's Magazine were highly desirous and instantly recognizable, often more stylized than his book imagery; no other journal illustrator could match Parrish's winning combination of precise draftsmanship, strong graphic design, and amusing characters.According to David Apatoff, Art Critic, The Saturday Evening Post, "Parrish abandoned his customary heavy details and rainbow colors to present a bolder, more high-contrast design silhouetted against a stark white background - a treatment more suitable for a modern magazine cover vying for attention on a crowded newsstand.A Dark Futurist is silhouetted against a white field with no background or details to prop it up. The composition is carefully centered with only differences in the hands and the artist's necktie to break the symmetry. These are crucial to the success of the design.Just as important as Parrish's clean, high-contrast style in these pictures is the refreshing humor and sophistication in content, which is usually absent from Parrish's fairytale paintings.A Dark Futurist shows us a different kind of modernism. Parrish steps out of his timeless fairy tales to tweak one of the most incendiary artistic movements of his day. Futurism, with its militant manifesto and its outspoken artists, was all the rage in Europe. Parrish pokes them, showing a "dark" and anxious futurist with pursed lips and thick glasses, poised to paint but not exactly sure of, or optimistic about, what the 'future' will hold. This suggests that Parrish was alert to, and had opinions about, current events of the day - something one might never guess from his usual subject matter."In his early Collier's illustrations, Parrish also developed memorable themes that he would return to in his 1920s magazine work. One of his most popular characters was the "seer," or man with keen visual powers, most often depicted as an artist, but also appearing as a tourist, scientist, and philosopher. Parrish's seer was recognizable by particular physical attributes: round glasses, indicating his visual and analytical acuity, and an overcoat and/or hat signifying his role as observer of the outside world.A Man of Letters, sold last year at Heritage Auctions, was one of the first Life covers Parrish rolled out for Gibson, and he repeated the character of the artist-seer, emphasizing the comic spin, for two later editions: A Dark Futurist (Life, March 1, 1923) captures a Parrish-like artist in foggy round glasses and a long green coat hunched over on a stool, balancing in his hands a paintbrush and a palette and staring quizzically at the viewer; A Good Mixer (Life, January 31, 1924) takes the exact same figure and turns him on profile next to an easel, reiterating his dwarfish stature and befuddled expression. Parrish actually gave a name to these covers with whimsical characters silhouetted against a plain backdrop: "odds and ends." In a note to Life's art editor, he summed up his utter delight in creating "odds and ends" like A Dark Futurist: "I'll say right now that there is a lot of good fun doing these for your crowd down there that I like. I like the spirit of it, and work, I think, is the better for it" (Ludwig, p. 101). Life is an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, a monthly from 1978 until 2000, and an online supplement since 2008. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography, and was one of the nation's most popular magazines, regularly reaching one-quarter of the population. Life was published independently for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the most important writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in The New Yorker) of plays and movies running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices. In 1936, Time publisher Henry Luce bought Life solely for its title, and greatly redesigned the publication. LIFE (stylized in all caps) became the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades, with a circulation peaking at over 13.5 million copies a week. One striking image published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a nurse in a sailor's arms, taken on August 14, 1945, during a VJ-Day celebration in New York's Times Square. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Its prestige attracted the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur, all serialized in its pages. After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues as a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007. The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC. On January 30, 2012, the Life.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com. 1883 humor and general interest magazine Life was founded on January 4, 1883, in a New York City artist's studio at 1155 Broadway, as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller. Mitchell held a 75% interest in the magazine with the remaining 25% held by Miller. Both men retained their holdings until their deaths. Miller served as secretary-treasurer of the magazine and managed the business side of the operation. Mitchell, a 37-year-old illustrator who used a $10,000 inheritance to invest in the weekly magazine, served as its publisher. He also created the first Life name-plate with cupids as mascots and later on, drew its masthead of a knight leveling his lance at the posterior of a fleeing devil. Then he took advantage of a new printing process using zinc-coated plates, which improved the reproduction of his illustrations and artwork. This edge helped because Life faced stiff competition from the best-selling humor magazines Judge and Puck, which were already established and successful. Edward Sandford Martin was brought on as Life's first literary editor; the recent Harvard University graduate was a founder of the Harvard Lampoon. The motto of the first issue of Life was: "While there's Life, there's hope." The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers: We wish to have some fun in this paper...We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world...We shall have something to say about religion, about politics, fashion, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station, and we will speak out what is in our mind as fairly, as truthfully, and as decently as we know how. The magazine was a success and soon attracted the industry's leading contributors, of which the most important was Charles Dana Gibson. Three years after the magazine was founded, the Massachusetts native first sold Life a drawing for $4: a dog outside his kennel howling at the Moon. Encouraged by a publisher, also an artist, Gibson was joined in Life early days by illustrators such as Palmer Cox (creator of the Brownie), A. B. Frost, Oliver Herford and E. W. Kemble. Life's literary roster included the following: John Kendrick Bangs, James Whitcomb Riley and Brander Matthews. Mitchell was accused of anti-Semitism at a time of high rates of immigration to New York of eastern European Jews. When the magazine blamed the theatrical team of Klaw & Erlanger for Chicago's Iroquois Theater Fire in 1903, many people complained. Life's drama critic, James Stetson Metcalfe, was barred from the 47 Manhattan theatres controlled by the Theatrical Syndicate. Life published caricatures of Jews with large noses. Several individuals would publish their first major works in Life. In 1908 Robert Ripley published his first cartoon in Life, 20 years before his Believe It or Not! fame. Norman Rockwell's first cover for Life magazine, Tain't You, was published May 10, 1917. His paintings were featured on Life's cover 28 times between 1917 and 1924. Rea Irvin, the first art director of The New Yorker and creator of the character "Eustace Tilley", began his career by drawing covers for Life. This version of Life took sides in politics and international affairs, and published pro-American editorials. After Germany attacked Belgium in 1914, Mitchell and Gibson undertook a campaign to push the U.S. into the war. Gibson drew the Kaiser as a bloody madman, insulting Uncle Sam, sneering at crippled soldiers, and shooting Red Cross nurses. Following Mitchell's death in 1918, Gibson bought the magazine for $1 million, but the end of World War I had brought on social change. Life's brand of humor was outdated, as readers wanted more daring and risque works, and Life struggled to compete. A little more than three years after purchasing Life, Gibson quit and turned the decaying property over to publisher Clair Maxwell and treasurer Henry Richter. Gibson retired to Maine to paint and lost interest in the magazine. In 1920, Gibson selected former Vanity Fair staffer Robert E. Sherwood as editor. A WWI veteran and member of the Algonquin Round Table, Sherwood tried to inject sophisticated humor onto the pages. Life published Ivy League jokes, cartoons, flapper sayings and all-burlesque issues. Beginning in 1920, Life undertook a crusade against Prohibition. It also tapped the humorous writings of Frank Sullivan, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Franklin Pierce Adams and Corey Ford. Among the illustrators and cartoonists were Ralph Barton, Percy Crosby, Don Herold, Ellison Hoover, H. T. Webster, Art Young and John Held, Jr. Life had 250,000 readers in 1920, but as the Jazz Age rolled into the Great Depression, the magazine lost money and subscribers. By the time Maxwell and editor George Eggleston took over, Life had switched from publishing weekly to monthly. The two men went to work revamping its editorial style to meet the times, which resulted in improved readership. However, Life had passed its prime and was sliding toward financial ruin. The New Yorker, debuting in February 1925, copied many of the features and styles of Life; it recruited staff from its editorial and art departments. Another blow to Life's circulation came from raunchy humor periodicals such as Ballyhoo and Hooey, which ran what can be termed "outhouse" gags. In 1933, Esquire joined Life's competitors. In its final years, Life struggled to make a profit. Announcing the end of Life, Maxwell stated: "We cannot claim, like Mr. Gene Tunney, that we resigned our championship undefeated in our prime. But at least we hope to retire gracefully from a world still friendly." For Life's final issue in its original format, 80-year-old Edward Sandford Martin was recalled from editorial retirement to compose its obituary. He wrote: That Life should be passing into the hands of new owners and directors is of the liveliest interest to the sole survivor of the little group that saw it born in January 1883 ... As for me, I wish it all good fortune; grace, mercy and peace and usefulness to a distracted world that does not know which way to turn nor what will happen to it next. A wonderful time for a new voice to make a noise that needs to be heard! Life was an American magazine of humor, commentary, and entertainment founded by John Ames Mitchell in the 19th century. (He also edited it for the majority of its run, until his death.) Publication History Life began in 1883. No issue copyright renewals were found for this serial. The first copyright-renewed contribution is from June 14, 1929. In 1936, the magazine was bought by Henry Luce of Time, Inc., who launched a new magazine with the same name but completely different staff and subscription base. We are not aware of active copyrights in the issues linked below. ADVERT SIZE: SEE RULER SIDES IN PHOTO FOR DIMENSIONS ( ALL DIMENSIONS IN INCHES) **For multiple purchases please ASK FOR + wait for our combined invoice. Shipping discount are ONLY available with this method. Thank You. At BRANCHWATER BOOKS we look for rare & unusual ADVERTISING, COVERS + PRINTS of commercial graphics from throughout the world. Our AD's and COVER'S are ORIGINAL and 100% guaranteed --- (we code all our items to insure authenticity) ---- we stand behind this. 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