Art Review: Maxfield Parrish exhibit shines at Newport’s National Museum of American Illustration

Who’s America’s greatest illustrator? For most people, the answer is as simple as a cocktail-napkin doodle: When it comes to the art of commercial illustration, no one did it better than Norman Rockwell.

Yet to an earlier generation of Americans, it was Rockwell’s older contemporary Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) who was the dominant illustrator of the day. A master of light and color — in contrast to Rockwell, who was more of a visual storyteller — Parrish was known for his dreamy views of young men and women, typically outlined against a lush backdrop of classical temples, soaring mountains and dramatic sunsets.

Despite their sometimes fusty imagery, Parrish’s illustrations remain hugely popular, turning up on everything from posters and postcards to mouse pads and screensavers. There’s even a color — Parrish blue — named for the artist.

As it happens, Parrish’s work is currently the focus of a terrific (if sometimes rambling) exhibit at the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport. Drawn mainly from the museum’s own holdings, “Maxfield Parrish: The Retrospective” features more than 60 original paintings, including some of the artist’s best-known works.

The show, which was due to close earlier this year but which has had its run extended through the fall, also reminds us that Parrish was a working illustrator with deadlines to meet and a wide variety of clients to keep happy. Indeed, some of his best work was done for companies such as Fisk Tires, Colgate and Edison-Mazda, a forerunner of today’s General Electric, which commissioned the artist to make posters and calendars celebrating its best-selling product: electric light bulbs.