America / 1899
Alarums and Excursions
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Alarums and Excursions as drawing (America · 1899).
Parrish employs a technique called sgraffito (“to scratch”) on the serpent’s tongue, producing its mottled texture by scraping away the upper layer of paper.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this drawing as brush and black and gray wash, with white gouache, over graphite, framing lines in pen and black ink and credits Maxfield Parrish (American, 1870–1966).
The museum's collection notes: Alarums and Excursions is one of nineteen illustrations the young Maxfield Parrish created for Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age, a children’s book published in 1899. In the chapter Alarums 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 o
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The Cleveland Museum of ArtAlarums and ExcursionsOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.