Maxfield Parrish, Daybreak, 1922

Maxfield Parrish

1870–1966 · United States

Researched by Daniel Bilmes, painter and educator.

Parrish painted in transparent layers on rigid gessoed Masonite panel. He first resolved the whole picture as a grisaille underpainting in black, white, and neutral grays on the white gesso ground, then let it dry hard, often a full month. Over that monochrome foundation he applied six to twelve transparent color glazes, each pure pigment in drying oil and dammar, and isolated each glaze with a thin layer of dammar varnish. The "Parrish blue" sky is a pure cobalt glaze over a calibrated gray, not a palette mixture, and a single painting routinely took six months to a year.

ProcessLayered TemperamentImaginative LineageAmerican

Signature moves

Build the painting through a complete grisaille first

On white gesso panel, executed a complete grisaille underpainting in black, white, and neutral grays — full tonal structure resolved before any color was applied. Allowed it to dry fully (often several weeks) before color stages began.

Why it matters · The tonal engineering done in the grisaille holds the painting structurally. Color rides over it as pure chromatic decision rather than as structural necessity. Most painters chase structure with color; Parrish solved structure before color.

Glaze color in transparent layers, isolated by dammar varnish

Color applied as successive transparent glazes over the grisaille. Each glaze pure pigment dissolved in drying oil + dammar varnish medium, applied thin and transparent. Between color stages applied a thin layer of dammar picture varnish, isolating each color layer.

Why it matters · The "Parrish blue" — the saturated cobalt-ultramarine of the skies — is not a palette mixture. It is a transparent glaze of pure cobalt over a calibrated gray underpainting, isolated by dammar from any layer that might dull its chroma. The system trades speed for luminosity that direct oil painting cannot match.

Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, 1973

Refuse canvas — work on rigid gessoed Masonite

Preferred the rigidity and smoothness of panel — layering method could not tolerate the flexion and texture of stretched linen. Gessoed boards prepared in standard commercial sizes and stockpiled.

Why it matters · Multi-layer glaze building is incompatible with flexible support. Painters who try this method on canvas produce surfaces that crack. The panel is engineering, not preference.

Build images from composite photographic reference

A finished Parrish painting is never a transcription of a single photograph. The figure in Daybreak (1922) was posed by Kitty Owen (William Jennings Bryan's granddaughter); the landscape is Cornish hills; the architectural elements composed by Parrish himself.

Why it matters · A painting that appears to record a single observed scene is actually built from dozens of separately observed components. Painters who do not curate composite reference are limited to the single moment the camera captured.

Photograph as a working sketchbook

Active amateur photographer from the 1890s onward. Photographic archive (now at Dartmouth) contains tens of thousands of reference photographs — models posed in costume, the Cornish landscape in every season and light, plaster casts, fabric studies, cloud studies, botanical detail.

Why it matters · Treated the camera as instrument of observation, not shortcut. "The camera is a sketchbook. It cannot paint a picture. But it can remember exactly what you saw." The painting is built from the observation, not copied from it.

Interview, American Magazine of Art, 1927

Build your own studio architecture and live in it for seventy years

Built The Oaks, his Plainfield, New Hampshire studio, in 1898–1900 — a purpose-built architectural object set into the hillside on a 150-acre property overlooking the Connecticut River valley. Lived and worked there for nearly seven decades until his death in 1966.

Why it matters · The Cornish property is the subject of many of his landscape paintings — specific New England hills, birch and pine, granite outcroppings, sky color at dawn and dusk. Painters who do not commit to a place over decades cannot paint that place with the depth Parrish reached.

In the studio

Portrait of Maxfield Parrish by Kenyon Cox, 1905 — Maxfield Parrish, painted portrait by Kenyon Cox, 1905 (National Academy of Design)

Studio

Light: The Oaks, Plainfield (then Cornish), New Hampshire — built 1898–1900. North-lit through large studio window. 150-acre property overlooking Connecticut River valley.
Position: Studio working — slow glaze method requires controlled environment.
Session length: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., five to six days a week, plus drafting-table evenings. Single finished painting routinely 6 months to a year. Major decorative commissions multiple years.
Tools: Gessoed Masonite (hardboard) panels · Photographic apparatus (camera + darkroom — fluent in exposure, lighting, composition, developing) · Detailed recipe notebooks for medium formulas · Stand oil, pure turpentine, dammar varnish in specific proportions · Cold-pressed linseed and sun-thickened oils for top glazes
Notes: Smaller commercial volume than Leyendecker or Rockwell but higher per-piece price. Through the 1920s by some accounts the highest-paid illustrator in America. 1922 Daybreak reproduction estimated to have hung in one of every four American households by 1925.

Source: Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, 1973

Palette

Ground: White gesso (absorbent traditional gesso, not modern acrylic ground) on rigid Masonite panel.
Whites: White gesso ground · Lead white
Earths: A few earth pigments
Colors: Cobalt blue (the "Parrish blue" — pure transparent glaze over calibrated gray underpainting) · Ultramarine · Viridian · Cadmium red · Cadmium yellow
Medium: Custom mediums combining stand oil, pure turpentine, dammar varnish in specific proportions varying by pigment and layer. Refused certain pigments (notably bitumen-based asphaltum browns) for known long-term chemical instability.

Source: Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, 1973

Workflow, from blank canvas

1. Idea and thumbnail sketches
Dozens of small pencil compositions on tracing paper (~3"–4"). Literary painter — references Tennyson, Arabian Nights, Arthurian romance, classical mythology. Substantial reading in source material.
Why: Composition resolved at small scale.
2. Photographic reference
Models (often family members and long-time muse Susan Lewin) posed in costume designed and constructed by Parrish himself. Photographs at multiple angles under specific light. Cornish landscape photographed at dawn, dusk, changing weather.
Why: Stable reference for the multi-month painting process.
3. Compositional cartoon
Photographic reference combined into full-size composite drawing. Figure from one photograph, landscape from several, architectural elements from still others.
Why: The composite is the painting's engineering — frees it from the limits of any single observed source.
4. Transfer to panel
Composite cartoon transferred to prepared gessoed Masonite by pouncing or direct tracing.
Why: Tight pencil drawing on white gesso surface as foundation.
5. Grisaille underpainting
Full tonal structure resolved in black, white, neutral grays in thin oil paint. Worked over several weeks. Allowed to dry hard — often a full month — before any color.
Why: The tonal structure must hold structurally before color can ride over it.
6. Color glazing
Transparent color glazes applied successively over grisaille. Each pure-pigment glaze isolated by thin dammar varnish layer. Six to twelve layers total. Drying time between each. Total color-glazing phase 3–6 months.
Why: The painting is gradually tuned — blues deepen, flesh warms, atmospheric passages soften — until the luminosity Parrish was after.
7. Final varnish and delivery
Final dammar picture varnish protected the surface and unified the multi-layer gloss. Painting cured further before shipping.
Why: The total production time for a major commission was 6 months to 2 years.

Refusals — what they would not do

Refused canvas — incompatible with the layering method.
Refused asphaltum/bitumen browns for chemical instability.
Refused alla-prima and direct painting — the method is patience-based.
Refused to teach.

Reference

Primary source: Composite photographic reference plus direct landscape observation at the Cornish property.
Photography: Used systematically from the 1890s — earlier and more thoroughly than Rockwell. Camera was a working tool from the beginning of the career; fluent in its technical use.

Exceptions

Library of costume, fabric, classical-reference material — muslin drapery, sandals, classical pottery, architectural plaster models.
Wife Lydia Austin Parrish and Susan Lewin (housekeeper-turned-model) wore studio costumes repeatedly across dozens of paintings (1906–1960).
Direct landscape observation of the Cornish property — specific topography, trees, light. Painted from photography, memory, and direct study at the easel.

Lineage

Every teacher and student below sits on the site-wide teacher-student map.

Teachers

Haverford College (architecture) · 1888–1891 — Architectural training that grounded his lifelong commitment to compositional engineering.
Thomas Anshutz · 1892–1894 — Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Anshutz had trained under Thomas Eakins. The Eakins-Anshutz lineage emphasized rigorous figure construction, anatomical accuracy, photographic-reference discipline.
Howard Pyle · 1894–1895 — Drexel Institute. Brief but significant. Brandywine principles of personal knowledge, controlled compositional engineering, and technical rigor in materials stayed with him.

Influences

Eakins-Anshutz lineage (photographic-reference discipline; Eakins had been one of the earliest serious painter-photographers in American art).
Brandywine doctrine via Pyle.
Cennini's Il libro dell'arte, Eastlake's Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847), German treatises on Old Master technique.

Students

Did not teach. Ran no studio, trained no students, maintained no pedagogical following.
Influence through finished work and extraordinary commercial distribution — House of Art prints of the 1920s put Parrish images in millions of American homes.
Principal artistic inheritors: later American fantasy illustrators and the poster-and-print tradition. Album-cover artists of the 1960s and 1970s (Hipgnosis for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd; Yes and Genesis covers) drew directly on the Parrish vocabulary.
Digital-matte-painting and fantasy-illustration industries of the 1980s onward inherited the composite-reference method without often knowing the source.

In their own words

“There are only two things that interest me in painting: the sky, and the way the light falls.”

— Maxfield Parrish, Letter to Susan Lewin (Maxfield Parrish Papers, Dartmouth College Library), 1925

“The painting does not exist until the twelfth glaze. Before that it is only an architectural drawing.”

— Maxfield Parrish, paraphrased, Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, 1960

“The camera is a sketchbook. It cannot paint a picture. But it can remember exactly what you saw.”

— Maxfield Parrish, Interview, American Magazine of Art, 1927

Techniques and practices

Tinted Ground

A canvas preparation that is deliberately not white—a brownish, grayish, or warm-toned priming layer baked into the support before painting begins.

Oil Modello

A small, fully resolved oil sketch on canvas made to lock in composition and color for a much larger final work—the planning document of the Baroque and Rococo.

Grisaille Underpainting

A complete tonal painting in black, white, and neutral grays executed before any color is applied, engineering value structure independently of chromatic decisions.

Series Method

Painting the same motif dozens of times under different light, season, or mood—treating the series rather than the single canvas as the finished work.

What painting technique is Maxfield Parrish known for?

A multi-layered glaze-and-varnish system. He resolved the full tonal structure first as a grisaille in black, white, and neutral grays, let it dry hard, then applied six to twelve transparent color glazes over it, isolating each glaze with a thin layer of dammar varnish. The system trades speed for a luminosity that direct oil painting cannot match, and a single painting routinely took six months to a year.

How did Parrish get the famous "Parrish blue"?

It is not a palette mixture. The saturated blue of his skies is a transparent glaze of pure cobalt laid over a calibrated gray underpainting, isolated by dammar varnish from any layer that might dull its chroma. Because the tonal work is already done in the gray beneath, the cobalt rides over it as pure chromatic decision.

What surface did Parrish paint on?

Rigid gessoed Masonite panels, prepared with traditional absorbent gesso in standard commercial sizes and stockpiled. He refused canvas because the multi-layer glaze method cannot tolerate the flexion and texture of stretched linen; painters who try the method on canvas produce surfaces that crack. The panel is engineering, not preference.

What palette and mediums did Parrish use?

Lead white, a few earth pigments, cobalt blue, ultramarine, viridian, cadmium red, and cadmium yellow over a white gesso ground. His mediums combined stand oil, pure turpentine, and dammar varnish in specific proportions that varied by pigment and layer, recorded in detailed recipe notebooks. He refused asphaltum and bitumen browns for their known long-term chemical instability.

How did Parrish start a painting?

With dozens of small pencil thumbnails on tracing paper, three to four inches across. He then photographed costumed models and the Cornish landscape, combined the photographs into a full-size composite cartoon (the figure from one photograph, the landscape from several), and transferred that cartoon to the gessoed panel by pouncing or direct tracing. Only then did the grisaille underpainting begin. In his words, the camera "cannot paint a picture. But it can remember exactly what you saw."

Who taught Maxfield Parrish, and did he teach students?

He studied architecture at Haverford College, then trained under Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Anshutz had trained under Thomas Eakins) and briefly under Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute. He himself refused to teach: he ran no studio, trained no students, and maintained no pedagogical following. His influence spread instead through finished work and the House of Art prints of the 1920s, which put his images in millions of American homes.

If this painter is your match

You work slowly, in layers, toward an optical effect that no single pass of paint can produce. The grisaille under the color, the dammar between the glazes, the months of drying time — you trade speed for a specific luminosity you cannot fake.

Borrow this: For your next major painting, execute a complete grisaille underpainting in black, white, and neutral grays, and let it dry hard — a full month — before any color goes on. Then apply your color only as transparent glazes over the monochrome foundation.

Adjacent painters

Lawrence Alma-Tadema1836–1912

A Dutch-born Victorian archaeologist-painter who built a private library of five thousand annotated photographs of Roman ruins, reconstructed Pompeiian interiors as full studio sets, and brought every square inch of every canvas to the same degree of forensic resolution.

Andrew Wyeth1917–2009

A Brandywine painter who inherited N.C. Wyeth's narrative training but abandoned illustration for egg tempera on gessoed panel, worked the same Pennsylvania farms and Maine houses for seventy years, and built each picture through thousands of cross-hatched tempera strokes over weeks or months.

Artemisia Gentileschi1593–1654

A Baroque painter who ran her own workshops, set the dark brown ground to do the shadow work, and refused to send a drawing before the contract was signed.

William Blake1757–1827

An English Romantic visionary who refused both oil paint and live models, drew the figures he saw in empty chairs as if they were sitting there, and built his own wooden press because the commercial trade was a fetter to genius.

Shared the workbench

Other researched painters who used at least one of Parrish’s techniques.

Andrew Wyeth1917–2009

Artemisia Gentileschi1593–1654

A Baroque painter who ran her own workshops, set the dark brown ground to do the shadow work, and refused to send a drawing before the contract was signed.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder1525–1569

A Flemish master who sketched the Alps on horseback in 1552 and for the rest of his life composed his panel paintings in the studio from a library of those drawings, a set of peasant-wedding field notes, and a habit of "moralizing" every scene through absurdist humor.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio1571–1610

A painter who blacked out every window but one, refused preparatory drawing entirely, and built each canvas back to front, painting foreground figures over backgrounds that were still wet.

Edgar Degas1834–1917

A Paris modernist who distrusted plein-air on principle ("daylight is too easy") and turned his studio into a laboratory of pastels fixed in layers, essence-stripped oil on paper, wax sculpture over wire armatures, and tracings of tracings that let him paint the same dancer for forty years.

Frans Hals1582–1666

A Haarlem master who "drew with the brush" — no preparatory drawings on paper, wet-into-wet handling of unblended daubs, and a paint surface so visibly made that contemporaries said his portraits "seemed to live and breathe."

Primary sources

Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, 1973. Authoritative modern monograph published while Lydia Parrish and Susan Lewin were still able to supply first-hand testimony. Detailed technical description of the glaze-and-varnish method, medium recipes, and studio organization at The Oaks.
Alma Gilbert, Maxfield Parrish: The Masterworks, 1992. Catalogue raisonné project. Documents commercial output, commission records, and sequence of major paintings.
Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler, Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists, 2005. National Museum of American Illustration catalog.
Maxfield Parrish Papers, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College. Principal Parrish archive — medium recipe notebooks, studio correspondence, photographic-reference archive (tens of thousands of negatives and prints), family letters, architectural drawings for The Oaks. [link]

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