Olive Moyer, Lyonsdale, New York, 1956 (acquired directly from the artist)
Bequeathed to Walter Pratt (a friend and business partner of Mr. and Mrs. Moyer), 1959  
By descent to Hazel Northam (his niece), 1965 
Private Collection, 1972 (bequest of the above)
Pratt Northam Foundation📖 (sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 5,1996, lot 179, illustrated in color)

Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

 

 

 

 

꧃Syracuse, New York, Everson Museum of Art of Syracuse & Onondaga County, 1967-1996🦂 (on extended loan)

Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Brandywine River🌠 Museum, Summer 1974

Southampton, New York, The Parrish Museum, The Dream World of Maxfield Parrish, June-July 1975

Oswego, New York, Tyler Art Gallery, Tyler Center for the Fine Arts, State University of New York, Aspects of Realism, December 1975, illustrated in color pl. 59

New York, The American Federation of Arts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Manchester, New Hampshire, Currier Gallery of Art; New York, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Maxfield Parrish: 1870-1966, June 1999- August 2000,ꦯ no.55, illustrated p. 116

Washington, D.C., Trust for Museum Exhibitions; Palm Beach, Florida, The Society for the Four Arts; Reno, Nevada Museum of Art; California, The San Diego Museum of Art; Savannah, Georgia, Telfair Museum of Art;  Alabama, Huntsville Museum of Art; Tennessee, Memphis Brooks Museum, Maxfield Parrish, Master of Make-Believe, January 2005-May 2006, illustrated p.107

Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973,🌸 p.185, illustrated in color p. 182

Alma Gilbert, Maxfield Parrish:The Landscapes, Berꦆkeley, California, 1998, p.20, illustrated in color, p.111

Lawrence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler, Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists, Edison, New🐠 Jersey,🦂 2004, illustrated in color, p. 291

 

In 1931 at the height of his popularity in America Maxfield Parrish issued a statement to the Associated Press announcing that he was abandoning the figurative work that had made him a household name and was now devoting himself exclusively to landscape painting. “I’m done with girls on rocks. I have painted them for thirteen years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more. ….It’s the unattainable that appeals. Next best thing to seeing the ocean or the hills or the woods is enjoying a painting of them (quoted in Maxfield Parrish: A Retrospective, San Francisco, 1995, p.14).

During the 1930’s, the magical, detailed landscapes seen only as backgrounds for his famous figurative work now shifted to the foreground. Goddesses and nymphs were replaced by another ideal - the mountains, rolling meadows, grand oak trees, humble barns, and open blue skies of the American landscape. In 1934, with the understanding that he would be painting what he loved best, Parrish signed on with Brown and Bigelow, a calendar company in St. Paul, Minnesota , with whom he would continue to work until 1963. From 1936-1941 Parrish produced one landscape a year for Brown and Bigelow. After these five years, he painted two works annually for the company, a summer and winter landscape. Swiftwater (titled Misty-Morn by Brown & Bigelow🐽) was produced as the summer landscap🙈e of 1953.

Parrish was endlessly fascinated with capturing the elements of nature in his landscape work, “the sense of freedom, pure air and light, the magic of distance, and the saturated beauty of color, must be convincingly stated and take the beholder to the very spot” (Coy Ludwig, Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 175). In Swiftwater, Parrish paints a dynamic composition of a roaring stream rushing down through the center of the landscape, racing dramatically toward the viewer.  The winding composition underscores the energy of the water swirling through the countryside and conveys this “sense of freedom”. Parrish further accentuates the kaleidoscopic 🍸depth of the scene using beams of sunlight to follow the aqua blue water along its path. The meticulously rendered trees clustered around the edges of the stream alternately glow with color and recede into the shadows of the shifting light. Parrish achieves an intense clarity of “pure air and light” through his labor intensive working method of employing numerous colorful glazes over a white ground.

During the 1930s, Maxfield Parrish began working in a smaller format, abandoning the 30 by 24 inch size he favored in the early 1930s and adopting the 22 1/2 by 18 inch format. According to Coy Ludwig, “his smaller paintings seemed to him more aesthetically successful than his larger ones. It was a wise decision, for his brilliant enamellike surfaces and intricately detailed subjects called for the smaller size” (Maxfield Parrish, New York, 1973, p. 177).