Minneapolis Institute of Art

A Bedfordshire Farmyard

Alfred Parsons, N. A.

Date

19th century

Medium

Watercolor over graphite

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

As a painter, prolific illustrator for Harper’s Magazine and books by popular English authors, also as a designer of gardens in Britain and America, Alfred Parsons played a role in catering to and shaping his American contemporaries’ concept of “Englishness.” In 1879, American author Henry James wrote, “Was it [in America] that Mr. Parsons learned so well how Americans would like England to appear?...The England of his pencil... is exactly the England that the American imagination, restricted to itself, constructs from the poets, the novelists, from all the delightful testimony it inherits. Bedfordshire, about 50 miles north-northwest of London, is a picturesque area of rolling farmland dotted by towns. In Parsons’ time, it would have been seen as accessible yet unspoiled by modern life. Europe

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