maxfield parrish

Mel Gibson Sells Art At A Loss

Filed under: Auctions, Celebrity Shopping, Art

Mel Gibson may be a fan of Maxfield Parrish's art but it's looking like the art wasn't such a good investment for the actor and his soon-to-be ex-wife Robyn. One of their paintings, Maxfield Parrish's famous 1922 "Daybreak" sold for $5.234 million at Christie's in New York, on the lower end of the $4 million to $7 million presale estimate. Bloomberg News reports that Robyn Gibson paid $7.632 million for the painting at Christie's in 2006 setting an auction record for the work of the American artist.

The field of Maxfield Parrish collectors is far smaller than artists like Picasso or Warhol. Parrish's unabashed sentimentality isn't popular with most people. It's no surprise that Michael Jackson was a fine of Parrish's idealized scenes. In fact the video for "You Are Not Alone" was inspired by Daybreak. Jim Halperin, co-chairman of Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, was one of the bidders on Daybreak but lost out to another bidder. He told Bloomberg that the sale was a great deal, a view confirmed by other experts. The piece is the most coveted and famous of Parrish's works.

Another Gibson Parrish, "Sing A Song of Sixpence," a mural which hung at Old Mill Farm in Greenwich, Connecticut, sold for 2.2 million against an estimate of $2.5-$3.5 million. The Art Newspaper reveals that the Gibson consignment brought $10,991,500 against estimates of $9,789,000-$15,657,000.

Faring far better was Andrew Wyeth's Off Shore, 1967, which sold for $6,354,500 against estimates of $1.2 million -$4.8 million.

Tags: american art, maxfield parrish, mel gibson

Major Maxfield Parrish Works Up For Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions, Art

The paintings of American artist Maxfield Parrish often go unremarked upon in today's culture. Deemed dates, too romantic, perhaps even schmaltzy, for the most part he has been relegated to the past like Norman Rockwell, too earnest for our cynical modern world. But Parrish will get his day in the sun at the Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture at Christie's New York on May 20. That's when Christie's will offer the most significant collection of illustrations and paintings by Parrish ever seen at auction. Parrish's most famous work, Daybreak, shown above, is estimated to sell for $4 million to $7 million. The estimated price for the iconic painting is less than the $7.6 million it sold for back in 2006 at Christie's setting a world auction record for a Parrish work.

Parrish had a long career illustrating for magazines including Life, Scribner's, Harper's Weekly, and Collier's as well as other commissions. Another piece up for sale is Sing a Song of Six Pence, estimated at $2.5-3.5 million, a nearly six-foot long mural created in 1910 for the hotel bar of the Sherman House in Chicago, Illinois. His Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, estimated at $1.5-2.5 million, graced the cover of Hearst's Magazine's November 1912 issue. His technique combined traditional painting with other technology. Later he decided he was done painting girls on rocks and moved onto landscapes. His Sheltering Oaks, estimated at $600,000-800,000, was originally published in a 1960 calendar for The Mutual Insurance Company of Frederick County, Maryland. The landscape features his signature blue sky, a dazzling glazed color dubbed "Parrish blue."

Tags: art, art auction, christies, maxfield parrish