The Flower Garden

Clara Weaver Parrish left her wealthy Alabama family to study art abroad in the 1880s; upon her return to the United States, she enrolled at the Art Students League to work under William Merritt Chase. She painted in an Impressionist manner and also became an associate of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, where she specialized in stained glass windows for homes and churches.

A reviewer of Parrish’s 1921 exhibition at the Brooks Memorial Gallery in Memphis found the artist to be “classic in her subjects [and] a deep student fond of color, but never overdone.” Bold brushstrokes and vivid colors appear to dance across the surface of this wood panel and lend the work a certain immediacy, as if the scene had been painted in the garden’s midst.