Page 136 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

M. Parish-Watson (1879-1941)

Clarence Lisle MacDermid Parish-Watson (1879-1941) was born
in Ontario, Canada, the son of Clarence Richard Parrish and Nina
Florence Carscallen. He was a collector and art dealer who started
his career at Drecier & Co., New York, before founding his own
eponymous firm, M. Parish-Waston & Co. Inc. at 44 East 57th Street,
New York, NY. The company handled a range of material, including
European arms and armor, Georgian silver, Islamic ceramics and
rugs, and Chinese works of art. Parish-Watson’s clients included
private collectors, such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960),
Charles P. Taft (1843-1929), and William Randolph Hearst (1863-
1951). For the latter, he served as the Vice President and General
Manager of the International Studio Art Corp., which held title to
Hearst’s $12 million art collection. (Fig. 1)

The gallery also worked closely with institutional collections, such
as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of
Art, the Huntington Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Art, to
whom the gallery would lend, donate, and sell artworks. Among
the company’s exhibitions and publications of Chinese art were
Chinese Pottery of the Han, T'ang and Sung Dynasties (1917) and
Archaic Chinese Bronzes of the Shang, Chou and Han Periods
(1922). Parish-Watson’s personal collection included a famous pair
of ‘chrysanthemum’ vases, which Lord Kitchner (1850-1916) had
received as a gift from Emperor Puyi (r. 1908-1912) in 1909, and
Parish-Watson purchased form Kitchner’s heir for $75,000 in 1920.
Sources:
Jellinek, Provenance, p. 350
https://nyti.ms/43XcNrb
https://nyti.ms/3KgA4NI
https://nyti.ms/451PNYN
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40303385
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25136275
https://www.amazon.com/Archaic-Chinese-bronzes-collections-
Parish-Watson/dp/B003SNK024
https://www.mcblainbooks.com/pages/books/89268/parish-watson-
inc-co/chinese-pottery-of-the-han-tang-and-sung-dynasties-owned-
and-exhibited-by-parish-watson-co-inc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_P._Foss_Jr.
Found but could not access:https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/
view/23083592/art-dealers-the-rockefellers-and-the-network-of-
chinese-art-in-

134 | BONHAMS