Maxfield Parrish Painting Stays Put in Vermont

WINDSOR, Vt. —  How the painting made its way to the lobby of a small-town bank is quite a tale. How it stayed there is even more remarkable.

The painting is called “New Hampshire: Thy Templed Hills.” It depicts a classic woodland scene with a sky of electric blue--the trademark of Maxfield Parrish, the great painter and illustrator who died in 1966.

In the 1950s, Parrish gave the painting to a bank’s tellers in gratitude for their help. Over the years, the bank would move 100 yards north on Main Street; it would merge with larger banks.

But the electric-blue sky and shimmering hills remained.

Then, apparently, the bank suddenly realized that a valuable asset was hanging on its wall. Word got out that the painting would be sold.

Unless . . .

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The past still lives in Windsor. Main Street features the Old Constitution House, where the Vermont Constitution was ratified in 1777. And the Old South Church, two centuries old.

There’s a row of stately homes, several of them once owned by branches of the Evarts family. Its most illustrious member, lawyer William Evarts, defended President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial and went on to serve as secretary of state.

On Mill Brook, at the old Robbins and Lawrence Armory, mass production got its start in the mid-19th century with the manufacture of guns with interchangeable parts easy to replace on the battlefield.

But Windsor has lost a lot over the years.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. shoe sole plant, just downhill from Main Street on the banks of the Connecticut River, closed a decade ago. It was the town’s biggest employer. The other pillar of Windsor’s mid-20th-century economy, the Cone-Blanchard Machine Co., recently went through a sale and downsizing.

Windsor is feeling less self-contained, longtime residents say. “So many people work out of town and just come home to go to bed or watch their videos,” says Joyce Pierce, a lifelong resident. “You lose that sense of community.”

Windsor County National Bank once stood on Main Street. In 1967, Vermont National Bank, a statewide operation based in Brattleboro, took over. Intent on expanding, the bank hoped to demolish the Windsor House hotel next door.

In the end, the hotel became the state’s crafts center, and the bank moved to a small, single-story building. When it moved, it took along the Parrish painting.

Parrish had lived nearby, in Plainfield, N.H. He was part of the Cornish colony, artists and writers who, starting in the late 19th century, migrated from New York and elsewhere to New Hampshire.

Like many artists, Parrish did his banking and business in Windsor. There, his “girls,” as Parrish called them, helped balance his checkbook.

“He was a very, very nice man,” recalls Pierce, once a Parrish girl, now a retired bookkeeper.

The feeling was mutual. “You girls kept my records straight. Here’s a painting for you,” he told them one day in the early 1950s.

Years later, Parrish’s son, Maxfield Jr., wrote of his dad’s “good will” for those “who over the years helped him so much with that side of life most artists have difficulty with, the handling of money.”

Originally titled “Summer in New Hampshire,” the painting had been reproduced internationally. For nearly a half-century it has been a fixture here, like the white clapboard of Old South Church.

For a view, just walk up to a teller’s window and turn slightly to the right. Though it’s not on Historic Windsor Inc.’s walking tour (“It’s not a historic building,” says one employee), many antiques dealers willingly direct visitors.

So it came as something of a shock to the people of Windsor when they learned that Maxfield Parrish’s gift was leaving town.

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The bank was merging again, this time with the Chittenden Bank, based in Burlington. Someone decided the painting should be sold; the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, N.H., wanted it for a national exhibition due at its doorstep later this year and agreed to pay half its assessed value of $300,000.

Employees learned of this by accident: A notice arrived by fax at closing time early last month. The Currier staff was due at 8 a.m. the next day, an hour before opening, to close the deal.

Word, and outrage, spread. Offers of help poured in. “I may be 75, but I can still picket,” volunteered Moll Spencer of West Windsor.

And there were threats: “I’ve had people who have hundreds of thousands in that bank call me up and say, ‘If that painting comes down, my account does too,’ ” reported Wes Hrydziusko, a former bank teller who once served as a state representative from Windsor.

An hour before the transfer, someone--no one will say who--went to the police with copies of a letter that Parrish’s son wrote in 1967, a year after his father’s death. “Dad intended this picture to stay where it is,” he wrote, “no matter whether Vermont National Bank and all its merged branches get absorbed by J.P. Morgan or not.”

Police Lt. Vincent Jordan headed to the bank, armed with the question: Who owns Parrish? At first, bank officials hoped to build community support for the sale. Then they backed off.

“It will stay in Windsor and stay in the branch,” pledged Robert Hain, the bank’s vice president of marketing.

“It was us who needed to be educated. We really messed up,” conceded Robert Soucy, the bank’s executive vice president. “We should have done a much better job taking into account the feelings of the employees and the community.”

Retired employees have set up a charitable trust to ensure that the painting remains in Windsor. No matter how often the bank merges, they insist that “New Hampshire: Thy Templed Hills” will stay right here.

“It wasn’t theirs to sell,” says Pierce, still one of Parrish’s girls.