Apache County Library District Office issued the following announcement on Aug. 30.
Artist and illustrator Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1870. Raised in the Eastern United States in a wealthy family, Parrish enjoyed success as one of the nation's highest paid and most sought after artists. It wasn't until he was diagnosed with Tuberculosis in 1900 that he visited Arizona for the drier air and warmer climate here.
Parrish was transformed by his years in Arizona, both personally and artistically. He once wrote to friends back East during the winter to tell them about sitting outside in the beautiful evening air, knowing that were he back home, he would likely have been snowed in. Artistically, he began painting simpler motifs than was his usual style, developing a deep blue sky tone that was later known as "Parrish Blue." Many of his later paintings produced after he left Arizona still showed his signature blue, a left-over of his days in the sunshine and warmth of our state.
"Daybreak," thought to be Parrish's most successful painting, depicts two figures in a classical foreground, with Arizona-type scenery in the background. The single highest selling art print in American History, "Daybreak" prints are still produced today. During Parrish's life, 1 in 4 homes had a copy of it hanging on the walls. If you look at album covers, commercials, book covers and music videos of many of today's popular culture icons, you will see references to Parrish's work. Some of those are:
-In 1995, Michael Jackson produced a music video, "You Are Not Alone", featuring himself and his then wife, Lisa Marie Presley, in emulation of Daybreak.
-The Bloom County comic book Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things features a cover with many elements of Daybreak and other works by Parrish.
-The Dalis Car album cover, The Waking Hour uses a detail from Daybreak.
-The Moody Blues 1983 album The Present features cover artwork that uses a variation of Daybreak.
-A 1986 Nestle television commercial for Alpine White features one scene imitating Daybreak and another resembling Parrish's Ecstasy.
-The Saint Preux album The Last Opera also uses Daybreak for its cover.
-Daybreak in O'Bryonville (2009) is a Cincinnati mural designed for ArtWorks by contemporary artist Kate Holterhoff. Parrish's flowering vine motif figures prominently in Holterhoff's mural.
-The film poster for 1987 The Princess Bride appears to have been directly inspired by Daybreak.
Even though Parrish died in 1966, his work still has influence.
Original source can be found here.
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