?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
MAXFIELD PARRISH (1870-1966) Two design studies for clock faces, circa 1890. Graphite on paper. Each about 90 mm; 3 1/2 inches, tondo, cut to size. Tipped to mount and decoratively framed to 29x13 inches with a print of the illustration of the cooks, spoons, and clock face from The Knave of Hearts by Louise Saunders (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925).
Provenance: Sotheby's Sale #7197, December 15, 1998, lot 116; thence to private collection, Mississippi.
These early clock faces, one in mannerist style, the other with a neoclassical sunburst design, show his talent and penchant for detail and decoration. According to Alma Gilbert, Parrish scholar and Director of the Cornish Colony Gallery & Museum (the Cornish Colony was the New Hampshire artists' colony to which Parrish belonged) they would later influence the design of the timepieces in his most famous illustrated book, The Knave of Hearts by Louise Saunders (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.)
In a letter to the owner of this work she writes that the image from The Knave of Hearts (framed with the artwork here) was likely the ultimate realization of the work he began in these drawings. (February 17, 1999).
