Maxfield studied widely as a young man, abroad in England and France, and at home at Haverford College, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and at the Drexel Institute, where he had the opportunity to work with Howard Pyle, one of the greatest illustrators in American history.  While at the Drexel Institute, he also met Lydia Austin, a young instructor, who he would marry in 1895.  Parrish himself found work as an illustrator, working in Philadelphia until 1898, by which time his various magazine illustrations for publications and his burgeoning career as the illustrator, especially of children’s books (for authors such as L. Frank Baum and Kenneth Grahame), allowed the young couple to purchase a home, The Oaks, near his parents in New Hampshire.

It was around this time that Parrish developed tuberculosis, and coupled with the damages done to his health by the typhoid he suffered as a youth, Maxfield and Lydia found it necessary to seek out other climates,  spending time in the Adirondacks, Arizona, and Italy.  (The dry, vibrant landscape of Arizona has often been said to be a key influence for Parrish’s distinctive style and vibrant hues.)  Eventually, though, they found themselves resettled in New Hampshire, where their lives would take a very different turn, after they hired a 16-year old girl named Susan Lewin.

Susan was initially hired to assist Lydia Parrish with the care of the Parrish children.  (Perhaps due to Maxfield’s health concerns, the Parrishes waited until relatively late in life, for the time, to have children, with Lydia being almost 40 when their youngest child was born.)  Susan quickly became Maxfield’s model and assistant, and eventually, they began an affair.  Estranged from Lydia, who continued to live in the main house on the property, Maxfield ultimately moved into his studio where he lived with Susan.

Susan certainly must have served as a muse, because Parrish’s popularity skyrocketed in the years between 1905 and 1920.  His art was in demand by publishers (he did dozens of covers for Collier’s) and advertisers from Colgate to Oneida, and he also had murals commissioned by wealthy patrons like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.  Another mural, created in the Tiffany studio, incorporated 100,000 pieces of Tiffany glass, and drew the attention of Cyrus Curtis, the owner of the Saturday Evening Post, who commissioned a mural for the Post’s Philadelphia headquarters.  (Many of Parrish’s murals still decorated the public spaces they were designed for, and visitors can see them in places as varied as the Curtis Building in Philadelphia and the St. Regis’s bar in New York.)

Success allowed him to shift his focus away from advertising by the mid-1920s.  (He was so well-known that by 1925, it was estimated that 25% of the homes in America owned a Parrish print and the deep lapis lazuli blue he favored had become known as “Parrish blue,” hints of which are visible in the image above.)  Parrish chose to move toward painting works of art that reflected, in some ways, his first job as an illustrator, and in many ways, this is the era of work for which Parrish is best remembered, androgynous, mystical figures in fantasy landscapes.  By 1931, he announced that he was changing directions yet again, concentrating this time on landscapes.

In 1953, Lydia, who had for the most part left Maxfield in 1911, died, and he was left alone with Susan.  Susan, perhaps frustrated by Maxfield’s lack of interest in marrying her after so many years together, left to marry someone else in 1960, and it was at that point that Maxfield Parrish stopped painting at the age of 90.  He remained at The Oaks in Plainfield, New Hampshire until his death at 95 on March 30, 1966.

It is fairly easily to distinguish Newcomb-Macklin frames, as they have the unusual construction technique of perpendicular corner splines. They are also usually factory stamped and occasionally labeled as well. Newcomb-Macklin frames appear fairly regularly at auction, sometimes on existing paintings as the original frame, sometimes empty, and they fetch fairly steady prices, because they are still considered quality frames of good construction and good resale value.

A pair of bronze Marly horses. (p4A item # D9812387)

After Louis XIV decided to convert the royal hunting lodge into what is now Versailles, there was a need for a new location for the Royal Hunt. Louis opted for an area on the edge of the royal lands where he set about constructing the Chateau de Marly. (The neighboring community that sprang up to serve the needs of the royal family, Marly-le-Roi, is today a suburban community of Paris.) Chateau de Marly remained a popular retreat for the royal family, a respite from the social formalities (and the constant construction and remodeling) of the palace at Versailles. Although Marly’s golden age was during the rule of Louis XIV, both Louis XIV and Louis XV made continual improvements and changes to the Chateau, especially to the grounds, which were well-watered and lent themselves to elaborate waterworks. (In fact, after the construction of a hydraulic machine, Marly supplied water to Versailles and its famous fountains.)

A Ludwig Bemelmans painting of the village of Marly-le-Roi from 1957. (p4A item # D9943544)

Louis XV commissioned Guillaume Coustou the Elder (November 29, 1677 to February 22, 1746), a sculptor who had already contributed several statues to the Marly grounds, to create a pair of sculptures to flank the horse trough or pond in Chateau de Marly’s park. The works, carved from a single block of marble, were completed in an astoundingly short period – just two years! They were installed in 1745.

Sadly, Marly’s fate was linked to the fate of the royal family. Damage was done during the French Revolution, and the property was sold around 1800. The chateau was completely demolished and sold off in pieces, but Napoleon later bought back the estate, so while the chateau is no longer there, the park still exists. The Chevaux de Marly (Horses of Marly) statues, completed in 1745, were moved in 1795 to Place de la Concorde, the square in Paris where the guillotine had been in operation during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, as part of a post-revolution makeover. (The Champs-Elysees runs between Place de la Concorde with the Chevaux de Marly and the Obelisk of Luxor in the east to the Place Charles de Gaulle with the Arc de Triomphe in the west.)

The Marly Horses remained in the Place de la Concorde for almost two centuries, until they were moved to the Musee de Louvre in 1984, where other Marly sculptures are now housed. There, they have been conserved, and cement copies have been placed both in the Place de la Concorde and in the grounds at Marly.

The motion and dramatic moment captured in Coustou’s works along with their prominent iconic placement in Paris made the sculptures immensely popular, and throughout the nineteenth century, numerous versions were replicated in bronze and smelter on a smaller scale for Victorian homes.

A drawing by Ferdinand Brader, farm scene, numbered 541 and titled Residence of Jacob Brumbaugh, Lake Tp: Stark County, Ohio 1887

One of the  “little mysteries” discussed at the 2012 Midwest Antiques Forum was the cipher that is Ferdinand Brader (1833 to ?). The Swiss-born Brader immigrated to the United States in the 1870s and was an untrained, itinerant artist who spent much of the late 19th century roaming Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio, where he would exchange large bird’s-eye view drawings of farmsteads, complete in near-architectural detail (like the one pictured), for room and board. In many ways, there are great details of his work – from his drawings, we often know where he was and when, and while we don’t know how consistently it was done, many of the drawings are numbered, which allows for a further sense of chronology.

Brader’s life, however, remains a great mystery. Some accounts hint at alcoholism, but the incredible detail and precision of his drawings makes this hard to fathom. He had several stints in area infirmaries, but whether this is attributable to the true itinerant/vagrant nature of his life or to something deeper is unknown.

The largest mystery of the “little” mystery that is Ferdinand Brader, however, is his disappearance. In late 1895, Brader found he had inherited a considerable amount in Switzerland. In residence at the Stark County Infirmary at the time, it appears he made plans to travel there to claim his inheritance, but after this, he vanishes completely. Of course, news of someone in the town infirmary inheriting a small fortune piqued local interest, so other small reports crop up, with at least one account making it seem he did not leave town and vanish (death during journey or a happy old age with family?), but rather that he disappeared after going to pay a debt, suggesting far darker possibilities. Or, as one associate suggests, did he just have one of the asthma attacks that plagued him while alone in an “out of the way place”?

Brader’s life continues to come into focus, with recent discoveries indicating that regardless of what happened, he never collected his fortune. All this information and a number of newly discovered drawings are the result of a Brader exhibit scheduled for the Canton Museum of Art in 2014. Brader’s works truly are meant to be appreciated up close, so if you find yourself in the area, plan a visit to the exhibit and stop by the database or the exhibit’s site for some great details. Seems that even “small” mysteries from “out of the way places” often loom very large….

-Hollie Davis, Senior Editor, p4A.com

A French travel poster for the resort town of Font-Romeu

French Poster Art Travels to New Heights

Few collectibles have aged as well as French poster art from early in the last century. After more than a hundred years, the seductive lure of these brightly colored and beautifully drawn posters attract a wide range of collectors including those who can probably afford original art. Vintage posters are a popular segment of the art print collectible area, and of all the poster categories, French travel posters are some of the most eagerly sought.

Signed French Travel Posters
Collectors love posters created by familiar artists of the early 1900s such as Georges Dorival, Constant Duval, Julien Lacaze. Later posters that date from the Art Deco Era featuring the likes of A.M. Cassandre and Roger Broders are also popular. While as a general rule, posters by these identifiable and prolific artists tend to bring the highest sums, dealers caution collectors against buying solely for name, as some of the most highly prized posters are the most beautiful, and were “one-offs” produced by artists whose names rarely appeared again. Collectors should consider each poster on its own merits, and buy for content and condition.

Values of French Travel Posters
Values for travel posters have been rising steadily since the first U.S. poster auction in 1979 at Swann Galleries. At an August 2011 sale of travel and vintage posters at Christie’s, 298 lots sold for a total of $1.27 million.

According to poster expert and dealer, Jack Rennert, the value of a poster is based upon four criteria: artist, subject, rarity and condition. Due to age, small tears and pin holes are common and acceptable, but do bring down the value and collectors prefer examples with the vivid colors of the originals.

Posters set in the south of France fetch premium prices. Collectors love Monte Carlo, Monaco and Nice, especially views with beaches and palm trees. If there are people on the beach, even better, and if the sunbathers include beautiful women, better still. If the poster is of a popular destination and subject with only a few known copies, the price can approach that of original artwork.

Brief History of French Travel Posters
These posters were produced as advertising, not art, and as such, were manufactured with the idea of a limited existence. This limited supply creates high demand, although the posters were popular inexpensive art almost immediately as soon as the multi-color stone lithography process (pioneered by Jean Cheret at the end of the 19th Century) came into widespread use. The popular posters were produced in vibrant colors to advertise everything from cigarettes to champagne, and by the 1890s, railways were plastering their stations throughout France with oversized posters of beautiful people in exotic destinations. Although people collected them almost from the start, two world wars have taken their toll on extant examples.

-by p4A Contributing Editor Susan Cramer.

Andy Warhol screenprint, “Heart”, inscribed “Happy Birthday / Tommy P / love Andy Warhol / May 1979″

As Heraclitus said, you never step in the same river twice. I wonder if he had a child, because while you never step in the same river twice, in many areas of life you can sort of, sometimes, “wade” into the same river twice, and at least attempt to recreate situations that have passed – reconnect with high school friends, try for a more peaceful start to the day tomorrow, make a different choice from the restaurant menu next time, etc. But that’s the bittersweetness of children – once it’s gone, it’s gone, and every day they become another version of themselves and yesterday’s version vanishes forever. To my unending delight, there are, of course, all those versions to come, but to my unending sadness, the Nora I had at three days and at three months are gone. In just a few weeks, I will have 365 versions of her behind me – she’ll be a whole year old! And so, in honor of Baby Girl’s first birthday, I thought I’d take a look through the database at all the things that have been birthday gifts at some point.

I was surprised by how many birthday-related items we have in the database! Some of them were originally made as birthday gifts, while others have had the role of birthday gift added to their legacy after becoming antiques. For instance, this little traveling desk with all its cubbyholes and a tiny engraving of George Washington in the center was a gift to researcher Nina Fletcher Little from her husband, Bertram, one-time director the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England). This paint-decorated box, on the other hand, started life as a birthday present. The inscription on the back indicates that it was a gift to a little girl on her sixth birthday. And then there are legions of artworks that have been gifted, often by the artist. Andy Warhol, for example, gave a number of screenprints as gifts, including the heart pictured above. Other gifts, well, they make you wonder. While Warhol’s gifts convey a sense of warmth and affection, I’m still trying to determine what the giver of this was trying to say….

-Hollie Davis, Senior Editor, p4A.com

To search the Prices4Antiques antiques reference database for valuation information on hundreds of thousands of antiques and fine art visit our homepage www.prices4antiques.com

Oil on panel still life painting by Henry Faulkner titled Iris in Milk Pitcher.

Henry Faulkner oil on panel painting, still life, titled Iris in Milk Pitcher

William Henry Harrison portrait reverse painting on glass

Poor William Henry Harrison!  He had already had a very full life – participating in the vicious conflicts in the Northwest Territory before and during the War of 1812, serving as governor of the Indiana Territory, traveling to Columbia as a diplomat.  Aside from an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1836, he’d come home to Ohio, where, then in his early 60s, he was contentedly puttering around his farm.  But then the 1840 election came calling and Harrison left behind the contented provincial “log cabin” life he was mocked for during the campaign to win the election.  The campaign was a vigorous one and an early example of political spin: Harrison, born into a Virginia slaveholding family, was depicted by Van Buren as a bumptious backwoods man who wanted to sit around picking his teeth and drinking hard cider.  This failed, fueling instead the image of Harrison as a man of the people while Van Buren came off as an elitist.  The “Log Cabin” campaign resulted in log cabin imagery being plastered on everything, including whole sets of china, and anything that couldn’t easily bear the picture of a log cabin, like this inkwell, could be made in the shape of a cider barrel.

Determined to prove he hadn’t gotten soft in his old age, Harrison (pictured above in this reverse painting on glass) insisted on giving his inaugural address on a raw March day, sans coat or hat, an address that it should be noted took him two hours to read.  That did not, as is commonly thought, make him ill.  What felled him was a cold that cropped up three weeks later.  The busy first days of holding the office did not allow Harrison any rest or even any peace and quiet, and he went downhill quickly, likely not helped by all the castor oil and leeches, dying nine days after falling ill, thirty days after taking office, and 170 years ago on this April 4th.

This was the first time the country had lost a president in office and regardless of political affiliation, Americans seemed to take the death hard.  The funeral was quite an affair and Harrison was commemorated everywhere, even on schoolgirl samplers like this one.  This unique situation continues to impact the marketplace today.  Because of Harrison’s short time in office, there are few documents signed by him as president, and autograph collectors will often pay 10-20 times more for a signature from his presidency than one of the many signatures from the years before!

-Hollie Davis, Senior Editor, p4A.com

Theodore Clement Steele oil painting, Early Indiana Landscape with Cows. Sold by Jacksons Auction Company in 2008.

When Dennis Jackson held his first Indiana art auction in 1981, he was told the event would never succeed. Thirty years later, Jackson is still specializing in artwork by Hoosier painters. And, interest remains strong.

On March 27 Jacksons Auction Company will conduct its latest art sale. At the same time, the firm will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its initial art auction.

Jackson didn’t set out to sell Indiana art. When he founded Jacksons Auction Gallery in an old barn on the outskirts of Anderson, Ind., in 1978, oak furniture was the focus of many of his sales. He realized he could buy oak reasonably in Indianapolis and sell it for a profit in Anderson.

While at one downtown Indianapolis warehouse auction in order to buy furniture, Jackson watched an Indiana painting sell for $2,500. The event resulted in an epiphany.

“I’m standing there in shock, thinking, Dennis Jackson, you’re not very smart,” he recalled. “I realized at that point in time I’d moved a complete estate in Anderson, and it brought $2,500.”

If bidders were willing to spend that kind of money on paintings by Indiana artists, then Jackson wanted in on the action. “I am going to see about selling Indiana art in Indiana,” he said.

There was only one problem — he was largely unfamiliar with the subject.

“I knew what an oil on canvas was and an oil on board. I knew who T.C. Steele was,” he said. But that was about the extent of his knowledge.

As a former teacher, he wasn’t discouraged. “I realized I needed to learn about art,” he said.

“I immediately bought every Indiana book I could find and read them. I was not an art expert as such. I realized I had a good eye — that’s God-given. I just did not have any background.” He asked a lot of questions, with knowledgeable dealers patiently helping him.

Yet, not everyone was enthusiastic about the idea of an Indiana art auction.

“Everybody said, ‘It will not work.’”

Although he had to borrow money to buy paintings to fill the sale, Dennis Jackson's investment paid off. This ad promoted that first auction, held April 12, 1981.

At first, they seemed to be right. When Jackson placed an ad in Tri-State Trader (now AntiqueWeek), seeking consignments for the first Indiana art auction, he got only two. One was a small snow scene by Theodore Clement Steele, the state’s most noted painter. The other item — a Louis Icart etching — was French.

Discouraged but not deterred, Jackson took the initiative.

“I borrowed money from the bank, and I went out and bought all the Indiana signed paintings that I could find for $200 or less. I ended up with about 35 paintings, with that T.C. Steele being the lead.”

The auction was held on April 12, 1981. Paintings sold that day included landscapes by Frank J. Girardin and Frederick Polley, as well as a W.A. Eyden dock scene. As anticipated, however, it was the Steele that brought the most interest, realizing $3,400.

Jackson followed up the event with a second Indiana art auction, a 50-painting sale that September. In March 1982 he put together a 100-lot auction of Indiana art, clearly having found a niche market. The artists represented read like a Who’s Who of Indiana art — Steele, J. Ottis Adams, William Forsyth, Otto Stark, R.B. Gruelle, Will Vawter, V.J. Cariani, Glen Cooper Henshaw, Gustave Baumann and more.

For the first several years the company held two auctions annually, in March and September, then added a third sale in November and eventually a fourth in June. Each auction averaged about 100 lots.

In 1992 Jackson joined forces with Sue Wickliff, opening Jackson & Wickliff in Carmel, Ind. While there, he continued to specialize in Indiana art, while also selling a variety of antiques. When the partnership ended in 2004, Jackson contemplated giving up his art sales. However, a fortuitous phone call persuaded him to keep at it.

The call was from a friend who wanted to consign a painting by Steele to one of Jackson’s art auctions. It came as Jackson was cleaning out his office at the Carmel auction gallery. Jackson explained he was no longer selling art in Indianapolis.

“The guy said, ‘I don’t care where you’re at, I want you to sell it.’”

Jackson called his son Bryan, who had been a part of the family’s auction business since he was a child. They decided to continue with Indiana art auctions. Within two months they had 50 consignments and had found a new site on Zionsville Road in Indianapolis to serve as their gallery. The resulting sale, held in May 2004, was followed by another in September. The following year they conducted three art auctions. Consignments continued to come in, with the firm now holding six Indiana art sales annually.

The business hit a slight snag when Bryan, a mental health specialist in the Army, was deployed to Iraq for a year in 2005 to 2006. However, the younger Jackson kept involved overseas by cropping art photos emailed to him from his dad in Indiana. When he returned to the states, Bryan initially planned to attend radiology school. But, during a three-month wait leading up the program, he helped for his father and discovered along the way that he enjoyed the auction business.

“He came to me and said, ‘Dad, I like the auction thing,’” Dennis Jackson recalled. Bryan dropped the idea of radiology school, electing to stay in Indianapolis to work for his father. However, that soon changed.

When Dennis Jackson turned 60, he approached his children, Bryan and Michele (also a licensed auctioneer who had helped with the firm) and encouraged them to form a new company. “I want to work for you,” he told them.

In 2006 the siblings formed Jacksons Auction Company, continuing the tradition started by their father, with Indiana art playing an integral role in the business.

-Don Johnson, p4A.com
originally published in AntiqueWeek, March 2011.