The Blue Room (The Procession Passing Solemnly Across the Moonlit Blue Room)

Details

Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
The Blue Room (The Procession Passing Solemnly Across the Moonlit Blue Room)
signed with initials 'M.P.' lower right and inscribed with title lower left--signed 'Maxfield Parrish' and inscribed 'No. 224 The Oaks Windsor, Vermont' on the reverse
pencil and gouache on paper
13 x 9in. (33 x 22.8cm.)

Provenance

Tillon Galleries, Buffalo, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owners, 1977

Literature

K. Grahame, The Golden Age, New York, 1899, p. 218, illus.
F. Bharucha, ed., Buried Treasures: The Black and White Work of Maxfield Parrish, 1896-1905, San Francisco, California, 1992, n.p., illus.
P.W. Skeeters, Maxfield Parrish: The Early Years, 1893-1930, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1973, p. 213, illus.

Lot Essay

In 1899, while also producing the drawings for Washington Irvings's Knickerbocker History, Maxfield Parrish executed thirty-two illustrations for Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age. Published in London and New York, the book was well received on both sides of the Atlantic. The Golden Age, written for both a child and adult audience, relays the adventures and fantasies of the four children of a English country family. The story is told from the point of a view of a child. Yet, as Coy Ludwig points out, "few children, however, had imaginations to match that of Parrish, who was a master of fantasy." (C. Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 29)

Coy Ludwig continues, "In these illustrations he chose to avoid the cute and anecdotal, which entrap so many illustrators of children's books. Instead he has sensitively perceived and re-created the spirit of childhood--the feelings of innocence and freedom--which one inevitably loses as he grows older." (Maxfield Parrish, p. 29)