Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree

One of the most popular artists of the twentieth century, Parrish embodied both the nineteenth century’s spiritual love of nature and the new century’s optimistic fascination with the machine. Deeply committed to the popularization of art, he became one of America's first "public" artists. After study at the Pennsylvania Academy and with famed illustrator Howard Pyle, Parrish quickly established himself as one of America’s most acclaimed painter-illustrators, specializing in images of fantasy and idyllic beauty. "Princess Parizade," like most of Parrish’s work, was commissioned as an illustration. 'Collier’s Weekly," one of Parrish's most frequent clients, contracted him to illustrate the Arabic tales known as "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." Parrish's vividly colored and imaginatively realized conceptions of these popular stories were an instant hit with both children and adults and were subsequently issued in book form and also as commercial prints. "Princess Parizade," depicting the scene in which she finds the magical tree that will make her garden perfect, also marks the earliest appearance of Parrish's soon-to-be-ubiquitous "girl on the rock" imagery. The Academy also owns Parrish's monumental mosaic-mural "The Dream Garden," executed in 1915 for the lobby of the Curtis Building in Philadelphia.