New Hampshire
August 2013
After our summit hike from the nose over the lips and to the chin of Mount Mansfield in Vermont and our warm visit with our friend Carrie in Montpelier, we drive south through the excellent green mountains of the Green Mountain State.
The nose? The lips? The chin? Simply geologic features of these mountains that, from a distance, resemble the profile of these human body parts.
Staying on the interstate highway just long enough to cross the Connecticut River into New Hampshire, we make a right turn onto NH Route 12A, the Maxfield Parrish Highway.
This would be a good time to visit with Maxfield Parrish. I first became acquainted with this artist when, as a college freshman, I stumbled upon his painting called Ecstasy. It’s a rendering of a babe standing on a rocky hillside above a very blue river, mountains in the background, possibly the very mountains we just finished climbing. Her back is arched as her hair flows through her fingers. The wind picks up her dress just enough. Clearly, she is blissful. Behind her the sky is a rich dark blue decorated with billowing masses of white cloud. I mean, holy heck, this is the girl I had been looking for since my puberty began. It made no difference to me that she had been painted in 1929.
What I didn’t know at the time was that the girl in this painting was Maxfield Parrish’s youngest child, probably 20 years old when she posed. Jean, the babe, then went off to Smith College. The Squirt, my niece, attended Smith College. Alas, Jean Parrish, the daughter, also an artist, died in 2004 at the age of 93. She and the Squirt never met.
Maxfield Parrish was an American painter and illustrator in the late 19th to the mid-20th century. He is credited with shaping what is called the “Golden Age of Illustration,” using dazzlingly luminous colors. He had a specialty: blue. In fact, in his honor, his preferred shade was called “Parrish blue”. He was this country’s most popular American artist until Norman Rockwell came along in the 1940s.
How many people do you know whose name was honored by a highway and a color! And whose daughter was a babe too!
Just one more thing about this most excellent painting. Notice Jean’s dress. It’s not normal. I’m not sure what sort of material it might be but looked at in a certain way, Jean is connected to the Earth by an umbilical cord, as if the Earth birthed her.