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‘Village Street, Winter’ (Maxfield Parrish)

Maxfield Parrish was the king of middlebrow. More of an illustrator rather than a practitioner of high art, he was at least a painter through and through. Norman Rockwell — widely rated as more important — referred to him as his ‘idol’. His 1900s visions of blousy clouds and flowing garments are significant for the time but perhaps best forgotten. By 1931 he had pronounced to the press that he was ‘done with girls on rocks’.

As he gained in years, Parrish moved more towards the observed, inhabited landscapes of his adopted New England. He set up his studio in Plainfield, New Hampshire, where he painted Village Street, Winter.

A leaf-barren tree stands dark against the winter dusklight, partly obscuring the village church. Ground-floor windows of wood clapboard houses emit a warm glow — suppertime isn’t long away now.

No idyll lasts forever: this scene was painted in 1941, the last winter of New England’s peace before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into the great conflagration. Many sons of the Granite State must have thought of still scenes like this as they fixed bayonets in Europe and the Pacific.

Parrish painted the picture for his own pleasure, but such an artist with such a long commercial career was not unwise to the potentials of profit: even painters must eat. The reproduction rights to the image were licensed to Brown & Bigelow to feature in calendars, prints, and other materials which made Parrish a pretty penny. He was the Jack Vettriano of his day.

Brown & Bigeloow renamed it ‘At Close of Day’, and the back of the original painting shows a fascinating array of names for the work, including ‘Plainfield Church’, ‘Plainfield New Hampshire Church at Dusk’, and ‘Plainfield New Hampshire Village Church at Dusk’.

The most mentions, however, go to the name the artist himself gave it: ‘Village Street, Winter’.

Published at 12:30 pm on Wednesday 7 January 2026. Categories: Art Tags: , .
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