Alarums and Excursions
Maxfield Parrish1899
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States
<em>Alarums and Excursions</em> is one of nineteen illustrations the young Maxfield Parrish created for Kenneth Grahame’s <em>The Golden Age, </em>a children’s book published in 1899. In the chapter <em>Alarums </em>accompanies, the narrator persuades a friend to join him in a make-believe of Arthurian legends. Parrish depicted one of the boys in the midst of their playful fantasy, as he prepares to strike an enormous, coiled serpent. Parrish rendered the scene in crisp detail, using flat, delicate washes of monochrome ink, strong linear contours, and scintillating pricks of white gouache on the boy’s chainmail. Parrish’s designs found mainstream success in a variety of print media, making him one of the best-known illustrators of the twentieth century.
- Title: Alarums and Excursions
- Creator: Maxfield Parrish (American, 1870–1966)
- Date Created: 1899
- Physical Dimensions: Sheet: 37.5 x 24.8 cm (14 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.); Image: 27.9 x 17.7 cm (11 x 6 15/16 in.)
- Provenance: (Frederick Keppel & Co., New York, NY.), James C. [1855-1931] and Alice W. [1862-1940] Parmelee, Cleveland, OH, bequest to The Cleveland Museum of Art., The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
- Type: Drawing
- Rights: CC0
- External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1940.723
- Medium: brush and black and gray wash, with white gouache, over graphite, framing lines in pen and black ink
- Inscriptions: signed in image, lower right, in black watercolor: M . P; lower left, by artist, across bottom margin, in graphite: "Alarums and Excursions." . . . Once again were damsels rescued, dragons / disembowelled, and giants . . . etc.; verso, by artist, in top half: no. 225 [inside a box] / Maxfield Parrish. / "The Oaks" / Windsor: Vermont. / June of 1899.; on fragment of old mount, now removed, in brown ink: Original pen + ink drawing by Maxfield Parrish. / Being one of the illustrations of "The Golden Age" / by Kenneth Grahame (John Lane Co. 1899); on fragment of old mount, now removed: B[ought?] of Frd'k Keppel Co. / 1899-$50-
- Fun Fact: Parrish employs a technique called <em>sgraffito </em>(“to scratch”) on the serpent’s tongue, producing its mottled texture by scraping away the upper layer of paper.
- Department: Drawings
- Culture: America, 19th century
- Credit Line: Bequest of James Parmelee
- Collection: DR - American 19th Century
- Accession Number: 1940.723
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