Francis Stanley Parker was an artist whose life was his masterpiece.
Pogdaddle
link to the old days.
POG
Frank Parker, at 88; his art adorned works by his friend Robert Lowell
By Tom Long, Globe Staff | March 13, 2005
Francis Stanley Parker was an artist whose life was his masterpiece.
Mr. Parker, 88, who died of Parkinson's disease March 2 in his home in
Cambridge, was a Boston blueblood with a working man's wardrobe and a
poet's disregard for convention. He created lovely impressionistic
paintings that were once exhibited in the Boston Athenaeum, but is
perhaps best remembered as a lifelong friend of troubled poet Robert
Lowell, to whom he was devoted and whose work he inspired and
illustrated.
His work appeared on the covers of all 10 of Mr. Lowell's collections
of poetry. The covers were reproduced in ''Collected Poems, Robert
Lowell" in 2003.
''They were excellent commentaries on the books and were consistently
brilliant, " Frank Bidart, co-editor of the collection, said Wednesday.
''He had a deep understanding of poetry, " Mr. Parker's wife, Judith
(Wolfinson) Parker, said Wednesday. ''Lowell didn't want anyone else to
illustrate his work."
Mr. Parker, known as Frank, was the subject of several of Lowell's
poems, including ''To Frank Parker," which Lowell recited at his last
reading at Harvard before he died of heart failure in 1977.
''Lowell often wrote about the people around him," said Mrs. Parker.
''Frank accepted it as part of the relationship, though sometimes I
think he was a little embarrassed by it."
Mr. Parker became friends with Lowell when both were students at the
tony St. Mark's School in Southborough.
When the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet suffered his periodic,
well-publicized emotional breakdowns, Mr. Parker was often there to
call the police or arrange transportation to a hospital. ''When things
were falling apart, he was there to pick up the pieces," Mr. Parker's
daughter, Diantha of Chicago, said Wednesday.
Mr. Parker was also best man at one of Lowell's weddings. ''His loyalty
was always unquestioned," said Bidart.
He was born in Boston. ''His parents were very well-to-do," said
Diantha. ''He never had to have a job and he never really did. ''
Mr. Parker attended Harvard but dropped out in his first year to study
art at the Art Students League in New York City and in Paris, where he
was a volunteer ambulance driver when German troops invaded. He escaped
to the United States by way of Spain, but was so upset by the invasion
of his adopted country that he enlisted in the Royal Highland Regiment
of Canada --the kilt-clad ''Black Watch" -- because the United States
had yet to enter the war.
''He was a Francophile, no question about it, " said his wife.
During World War II, Mr. Parker participated in the invasion of the
French port of Dieppe, an ill-conceived operation prior to the D-day
invasion of Normandy in which 6,100 troops, 5,000 of them Canadian,
crossed the English Channel to assault an exposed beach in daylight.
Mr. Parker and nearly 2,000 others were taken prisoner.
He spent the next three years in prisoner of war camps in Poland and
Germany.
''He was treated roughly," said Diantha Parker. He was beaten and
starved and once spent a month in solitary confinement after an
unsuccessful escape attempt. For the rest of his life he bore a scar on
his head where he was struck by a rifle butt.
He worked for a time in a beet packing plant and escaped during a work
detail on a Polish farm, eventually making it back to the States.
After the war, he returned to France to live the hand-to-mouth life of
an expatriate artist, but came home to the States in the 1950s.
''There was a lot of anti-American feeling in France in the 1950s," his
daughter Linzee Jerrett, of Ipswich, said Thursday. Jerrett's mother,
Lesley Gray, was Mr. Parker's first wife, but the couple later
divorced.
A tall man with bandy legs, dark brown hair, and strikingly blue eyes,
Mr. Parker usually dressed in khaki pants and Dickie workshirts. He
lived in Cambridge and Ipswich, where he enjoyed scything hay by hand,
chopping wood, and tooling around the grounds of his family's estate in
a 1947 Farmall Cub tractor.
''He had a Victorian Boston accent," said Diantha. ''It was like being
raised by somebody from a different century."
At various times, Mr. Parker had studios on Dartmouth Street in Boston,
Irving Street in Cambridge, and at his second home in Ipswich, where
his family's roots go back to the 17th century. In Ipswich he worked on
two big easels under a skylight in a low-roofed studio in a dormer
redolent of turpentine. A horse's skull he had boiled clean hung on one
wall. Floor-to-ceiling shelves groaned under his book collection. A
smoked mackerel and a salami or two were squirreled away amid the
clutter of paint, canvases, and seashells.
''Like many people who had starved, he sometimes hoarded food," said
Diantha.
Mr. Parker created etchings and engravings and did many nude studies.
He painted several, but his works were primarily landscapes.
''He didn't sell many," his daughter said.
He was a charming, egalitarian man who loved to chat with friends and
strangers and read voraciously.
''He didn't write, but he was a very literary man," said his wife.
At times he struggled with drinking and was hospitalized a few times
before overcoming the problem.
He loved to read classical French poetry and often read it aloud.
''He had a great mind for abstraction and free-associated a lot. The
past and present would mush together," said his wife. ''He had a way of
speaking like nobody else. He was a great Boston character who made a
lasting impression."
In addition to his second wife and daughters, Mr. Parker leaves another
daughter, Katherine Lucy Parker of Norwich, England; a granddaughter,
Eliza Jerrett of Ipswich; and his former wife, Lesley Gray, also of
Norwich.
Funeral arrangements are private.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Hyfler/Rosner
"Pogdaddle" <pad...@puddle.net> wrote in message
news:140320050922425233%pad...@puddle.net...
> My Cousin Frank - my grandparents's first grandchild and
> our last live
> link to the old days.
>
> POG
>
>
> Frank Parker, at 88; his art adorned works by his friend
> Robert Lowell
>
> By Tom Long, Globe Staff | March 13, 2005
>
> Francis Stanley Parker was an artist whose life was his
> masterpiece.
Do you have any examples of his work? I'll look at the
bookstore, but it might be nice if it were posted.
Thanks for the obit and mentioning your connection.
Pogdaddle
engravings on the cover or dust jacket. A Lowell anthology was
published several years ago with reproductions of those. I just had a
look at Lowell's amazon.com page and none of those seem to have the
original covers.
His paintings are all in private collections and are not published
anywhere, as far as I know.
He painted a remarkable painting of allied POWS lined up in a prison
camp. Several years ago, his wife told me that particular painting is
going to a museum - she wasn't sure which one, but they are well
connected and can probably slip it into one at Harvard. He was well
known and liked, locally.
She was an editor at Harvard Magazine and grew up in Cambridge, the
daughter of a respected violinist, Wolfe Wolfinsohn. They seem to know
everyone.
POG
In article <se6dnY8dqIm...@rcn.net>, Hyfler/Rosner
Bill Schenley
> > friend Robert Lowell
> Do you have any examples of his work? I'll look at
> the bookstore, but it might be nice if it were posted.
Frank Parker did the cypress tree on the cover of "Lizzie and
Harriet." The tree was in the yard of the home Lowell shared with his
third wife, Caroline Blackwood, in Maidstone, Kent (Milgate).
http://www.betweenthecovers.com/display.php?id=34344
> Thanks for the obit and mentioning your connection.
Yeah. Pretty cool.