Famed for his dazzling and alluring colours, the artist and illustrator Maxfield Parrish (1870 – 1966) is now hailed as one of America’s great pioneers. Not only did he have an enormous influence on the "Golden Age of Illustration", he also helped shape the future of American visual art.

In particular, Parrish’s nudes in fantastical settings were his trademark. But, clearly, his clothed figures were also stunningly rendered, as seen here in Enchantment (Cinderella). Taking his subject from the well-known fairytale, Parrish breathes life into his heroine in typical Parrish fashion – the warmth of the painting, with its stunning colours, are shared by the series of paintings he completed at the beginning of the last century which all take fairytales and folktales as their subject. Indeed, most of these paintings share the same temperate glow, the artist seemingly conjuring his characters from a campfire, in the grand tradition of storytelling.

Admired throughout America, Parrish would later be regarded as "one of my gods" by eminent artist Norman Rockwell who, himself, took illustration to new
heights in American art and saw his own work as inferior to that of the master "illustrator-artist", Maxfield Parrish.