WINDSOR — A treasured painting by Maxfield Parrish will remain in Windsor, thanks to cooperation between town officials and a bank that’s closing a branch in town.
Parrish, a famed illustrator and painter who lived in Plainfield, gave “New Hampshire: Thy Templed Hills,” a landscape painting often reproduced in tourist brochures, to the tellers at what was then known as Windsor County Savings Bank in the mid-1950s. The gift was a gesture of gratitude for the tellers for keeping Parrish’s accounts square.
A few months ago, representatives of M&T Bank, which is based in Buffalo, N.Y., approached town officials to say that it planned to close the Windsor branch and wanted to ensure the painting remained in town.
“They were very proactive in reaching out to the town,” Tom Marsh, who’s retiring at the end of the month after 15 years as Windsor’s town manager, said in a phone interview.
Conversations among town and bank officials and the remaining member of a trust set up to look after the painting resulted in an agreement to move the painting to Windsor’s town offices, where it can remain on view to the public.
Marsh said he expects the move to happen in the next few weeks, and that the painting, which is also known as “New Hampshire: Land of Scenic Splendor,” would remain in storage until town officials determine where it should be displayed.
The move also provides an opportune moment to have the painting examined by a conservator, to see if it needs to be cleaned, and for it to be reappraised, so it can be added to the town’s insurance policy, Marsh said.
The painting once was nearly sold. Vermont National Bank, which had taken ownership of the Windsor bank in the 1960s, struck a deal in 1999 to sell “Thy Templed Hills” to the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester. The price was never disclosed.
But the bank’s employees, including former employees who’d known Maxfield Parrish, pointed out that the painting wasn’t the bank’s to sell. It belonged to them, and they had the documentation to prove it.
In two letters to the bank, written in 1967, the year after the artist’s death, his son Maxfield Parrish Jr., wrote that his father had given the painting for the enjoyment of the employees, the Valley News reported at the time.
“He said it was a gift, not to the bank, but to the people that worked there, who over the years helped him so cheerfully with his banking problems, advice on investment, toting up his deposit slips, counting his coupons, and checking his addition,” Parrish Jr. wrote.
In February 1999, Windsor attorney John Springer and then-Town Administrator John Schempf, among other officials and citizens, forestalled the sale on the day the Currier was to pick up the painting, and in short order, the transaction was called off.
That April, 11 former bank employees met with Springer to form the Maxfield Parrish Painting Charitable Trust. Sherrill Gould, who was Windsor’s town treasurer at the time, served as the trust’s treasurer.
The trust eventually became inactive, and was superseded by the Windsor Arts Foundation, Marsh said. The foundation, too, has been inactive, but it retained around $15,000 that will be used to fund moving and installing the painting in Windsor’s Town Clerk’s Office.
There’s a new agreement, drawn up among the town, the bank and the last surviving member of the original trust, Mary Boudro, that stipulates the painting will remain in Windsor for the public’s enjoyment, Marsh said.
“What we’re committed to is that Maxfield Parrish gave this painting” to the bank’s employees, he said. The town’s focus is on “making sure this painting always stays in our community.”
