Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Parsons, Alfred William
PARSONS, ALFRED WILLIAM (1847–1920), painter and illustrator, was born at Beckington, Somerset, 2 December 1847, the second son of Joshua Parsons, surgeon, of Beckington. He was educated at private schools and entered the Savings Bank department of the Post Office as a clerk in 1865, but two years later (1867) he gave up his career in the civil service and devoted himself to painting. The first appearance of his work at a Royal Academy exhibition was in 1871, when he showed two pictures, ‘A Half Holiday’ and ‘In a Copse, November’. Subsequently Parsons was a frequent exhibitor at Burlington House as also at the Grosvenor, the New, and other galleries. In 1887 his picture of an orchard, ‘When Nature Painted All Things Gay’, was purchased by the trustees of the Chantrey fund; it is now in the National Gallery of British Art at Millbank (Tate Gallery). In 1892–1894 Parsons paid a visit to Japan; he published his impressions of that country, with illustrations, in his book, Notes in Japan (1896). He was elected A.R.A. in 1897 and R.A. in 1911. A member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours since 1905, he was chosen president of the society, in succession to Sir Ernest Albert Waterlow, in 1914, and held that office until his death.
A very important section of Parsons's artistic output is formed by his work as a book-illustrator, much of which appeared in Harper's Magazine. He also contributed the illustrations to The Genus Rosa by Ellen Willmott (1910), and collaborated with Edwin Austin Abbey [q.v.] in illustrating Herrick's Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1882), She Stoops to Conquer (1887), Old Songs (1889), and The Quiet Life (1890); and with F. D. Millet in providing the illustrations for the latter's book, The Danube, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea (1893).
Parsons was an enthusiastic gardener, and much of his work as an artist reflects his keen interest in gardens and flowers. A prolific artist of tender, delicate fibre, there is a vein of genuine poetry in his art, even if it is lacking in intensity and originality. In the history of art his position as a landscape painter is vaguely in the great following of the Barbizon school. Parsons, who was unmarried, died at his house at Broadway, Worcestershire, 16 January 1920.
[Daily Telegraph, 22 January 1920; A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributors, vol. vi, 1905–1906.]