The Tile Club: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting The Tile Club | Page 96

Alfred William Parsons
English, 1847–1920
One of several English members of the Tile Club,
Alfred Parsons was born near the town of Frome in Somerset
and became a well-regarded landscape and botanical painter,
illustrator, and garden designer—all interests that stemmed from
his father’s appreciation of plants and flowers. In 1862, at the
young age of sixteen, Parsons embarked upon a Grand Tour of
Europe, traveling to France, Switzerland, and Italy. Thereafter,
following a brief stint as a clerk in the Savings Bank department
at the Post Office, he pursued a path as an artist and enrolled at
the South Kensington Art School.
Parsons’ career in illustration was jump started in 1879 when
he met the American artist Edwin Austin Abbey. They not only
formed a lifelong friendship and shared a studio from 1881–1884,
but it was Abbey who introduced Parsons to the art editor at
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Parsons began collaborating with
Abbey on publications such as Selections from the Poetry of Robert
Herrick (1882), and he regularly submitted materials to Harper’s—
including a travelogue with sketches documenting his stay in Japan
in 1892. During the early 1880s, Parsons also provided illustrations
for William Robinson’s magazine, The Garden, which advocated for
a less rigid and more organic, artistic approach to English gar-
den design. By the end of the decade, Parsons, along with Abbey,
Francis Davis Millet, and John Singer Sargent, had moved to the
Cotswolds to form an artistic community in the idyllic village of
Edwin Austin Abbey (American, 1852–1911), Portrait
of Alfred Parsons, R.A., 1881, pen and ink on paper,
11 1/2 x 9 1/4 in., Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D.
Frederick Baker from the Baker/Pisano Collection,
2017.27.19
REFERENCES:
Milette, Nicole. “Landscape-Painter as Landscape-Gardener:
The Case of Alfred Parsons R. A.” PhD diss., University of
York, 1997.
Millet, F. D., “Alfred Parsons.” The Book Buyer (February 1,
1892): 4.
Broadway. Here, Parsons designed several gardens including those Watanabe, Toshio. “Alfred Parsons, RA, PRWS (1847–1920)
in 1895. Two years later, Parsons became an Associate of the Royal Japan: Biographical Portraits, edited by Hugh Cortazzi,
of the American actress Mary Anderson de Navarro at Court Farm
Academy of Arts and then a full Academician in 1911. Parsons was
also president of what is now the Royal Watercolour Society; he
formed a garden-design firm in 1898; and he exhibited frequently
at the Grosvenor Gallery, Dudley, Royal Academy, and the
New Gallery.
90 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting
and the Japanese Watercolour Movement.” In Britain &
284–296. Vol. IX. London: Renaissance Books published in
association with The Japan Society, 2015.