Lot Essay
The present work is one of twenty-six paintings that Maxfield Parrish painted as illustrations for Louise Saunder's The Knave of Hearts, which was his final book commission. Originally written as a play for children and performed at the Cornish, New Hampshire summer colony where Parrish and Saunders were neighbors, Parrish saw great potential in transforming the story into a book, writing to Charles Scribner's Sons in 1920, "The reason I wanted to illustrate The Knave of Hearts was on account of the bully opportunity it gives for a very good time making the pictures. Imagination could run riot, bound down by no period, just good fun and all sorts of things." (as quoted in S. Yount, Maxfield Parrish 1870-1966, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1999, pp. 86-88) Indeed, the illustrations for the book, published in 1925, are some of Parrish's richest and most innovative.