Maxfield Parrish illustration from "Poems of Childhood" (1904): beautifully framed antique
$195.00
IMAGE INFORMATION
Image Size: H 9.375” x W 6.50”
Matted & Framed: H 15.375” x W 12.50”
Framed Price: $185.00
Packaging and shipping approximately $22.00
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The first book MP illustrated was Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose, which Way and Williams of Chicago published in 1897. Since its appearance coincided with Howard Pyle’s announcement that he had nothing more to teach the young artist (who attended his illustration classes at Drexel Institute), perhaps HP made came to this conclusion after persuading Mother Goose and deciding that MP was a designer rather than an illustrator. Whether or not this was the state of the affair, the pictures MP created for Baum’s Mother Goose and for the books he illustrated after that were smashingly successful.
During the next three years, MP executed three more book projects. In 1900, he illustrated an edition of Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York published by R. H. Russell. He followed this with two children’s storybooks by Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age and Dream Days. In these turn-of-the-century works, MP stepped back into the fantasy world he created in the Old King Cole mural he had done for UPenn’s Mask and Wig Club in 1894.
Parrish biographer Coy Ludwig indicates that MP’s next book, Poems of Childhood, which Charles Scribner’s Sons published in 1904, was the best known of all the books he illustrated. According to Ludwig, “the idea to have Parrish illustrate Field’s poems originated with Edward Bok at the Ladies’ Home Journal. When Bok commissioned him to paint his interpretations of five of the poems for the magazine, Charles Scribner’s Sons arranged to use the five illustrations in a single volume of Field’s poetry.” [Maxfield Parrish. 31.] “With Trumpet and Drum” appeared in black and white on the cover the July 1903 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal. It was the first illustration in the Scribner’s 1904 edition, and Scribner’s produced it in color.
