About The Oaks
 A golden Angel sculpture at The Oaks |
In 1893, Maxfield
Parrish visited the new home his father, Stephen
Parrish, was building in Cornish, NH and wrote a glowing letter to a
classmate at the Pennsylvania Academy.
“You should see our place in the hillsides of New Hampshire,…Such an ideal country, so paintable and beautiful…a place to dream one’s life away. It is a paradise up there in the mountains…I hate to think of the city again!”
In 1898, the young artist and his bride Lydia arrived to begin building their own home on a hillside property facing the hill where his father had built his home. Parrish’s passion for the oak studded hillside transcended anything the young artist had ever known. He designed a home and a studio here and with the help of a local carpenter built the house where he lived until the time of his death in 1966.
The Oaks hosted artists, dignitaries, politicians and the greats of Parrish’s day such as President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, both Winston Churchill’s (the American writer as well as his British cousin, the statesman), Isadora Duncan, Ethel Barrymore, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton to name a few.
After Parrish’s death, the property was sold three times. It was acquired by Alma Gilbert in 1978. The main house suffered a major fire in 1979 but was rebuilt immediately following the architectural renderings first prepared by Parrish. Today, The Oaks is home to a gallery containing Alma Gilbert's collection of Cornish Colony art, and is the headquarters of the Parrish House Museum, a place where people enjoy the magnificent vistas, the views, and the gardens which inspired Parrish to create the paintings that made him the most reproduced artist of his generation.
“You should see our place in the hillsides of New Hampshire,…Such an ideal country, so paintable and beautiful…a place to dream one’s life away. It is a paradise up there in the mountains…I hate to think of the city again!”
In 1898, the young artist and his bride Lydia arrived to begin building their own home on a hillside property facing the hill where his father had built his home. Parrish’s passion for the oak studded hillside transcended anything the young artist had ever known. He designed a home and a studio here and with the help of a local carpenter built the house where he lived until the time of his death in 1966.
The Oaks hosted artists, dignitaries, politicians and the greats of Parrish’s day such as President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, both Winston Churchill’s (the American writer as well as his British cousin, the statesman), Isadora Duncan, Ethel Barrymore, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton to name a few.
After Parrish’s death, the property was sold three times. It was acquired by Alma Gilbert in 1978. The main house suffered a major fire in 1979 but was rebuilt immediately following the architectural renderings first prepared by Parrish. Today, The Oaks is home to a gallery containing Alma Gilbert's collection of Cornish Colony art, and is the headquarters of the Parrish House Museum, a place where people enjoy the magnificent vistas, the views, and the gardens which inspired Parrish to create the paintings that made him the most reproduced artist of his generation.
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| Steps to the lower garden | Fall foliage at The Oaks |
Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) was born in Philadelphia, studied at Haverford College and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and worked as an illustrator in Philadelphia until 1898, when he settled in Plainfield, New Hampshire. He lived and painted at his beloved estate there from that time on, and all of his famous works were created in the studio building located in the rear of the main house.