04/09/2006 May Day - Maxfield Parrish

“The great plate-glass front had turned to a deep creamy blue, the color of a Maxfield Parrish moonlight -- a blue that seemed to press close upon the pane as if to crowd its way into the restaurant” (page 116).

Born in 1870, Maxfield Parrish was an American artist known for his particularly individual style of art. Defying any specific school of art Parrish’s style was quite complicated. His method involved significant amounts of transparent oil, interchanging with coats of varnish on stretched paper[1]. The effect of this would result in

“a combination of great luminosity and extraordinary detail. In his hands, this method gives the effect of a glimpse through a window....except that the scene viewed is from the fairy tale world” (Illustration House).

Maxfield Parrish was well known in his time. He gained a following through his illustrations for books and magazine covers and by the 1920s he began to exclusively devote his artistic endeavors, specifically to painting[2]. Scribners, a frequent publisher of Fitzgerald’s, commissioned Parrish to do a frontispiece for them in 1910. The resulting image was for a short story by George T. Marsh, called “The Errant Pan”[3]


Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “May Day”. Tales of the Jazz Age. First Pine Street Books: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2003.
The picture is from, http://www.mcduffskeep.net/parrish/pictures/ErrantPan.jpg
[1] Illustration House
[2] Wikipedia
[3] Maxfield Parrish Gallery