Norman Rockwell

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(b New York, 3 Feb 1894; d Stockbridge, MA, 8 Nov 1978). American illustrator and painter. He studied at the Chase School of Fine and Applied Art, the National Academy of Art and the Art Students League, New York. He also enrolled at the Acad?mie Colarossi in Paris in 1923 during one of his many trips to Europe where he came into contact with the European abstract avant-garde. Although he was a constant admirer of Pablo Picasso and made several attempts to absorb some modernist techniques, he remained a realist artist throughout his career, drawing on the narrative genre style of such 19th-century artists as William Sydney Mount and Winslow Homer.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) is remembered for his heartwarming illustrations of American life that appeared on covers of the "Saturday Evening Post" magazine for many decades. Marked by nostalgia and moral fortitude, the paintings remain popular with collectors.

When people use the expression "as American as apple pie" they could just as well say as American as a Norman Rockwell painting. Rockwell produced cover paintings for the Saturday Evening Post, a major magazine of its day, for several decades. In the process he became nationally renowned. His nostalgic vision and eye for detail brought him enormous popularity. "He created a moral myth in which people were reassured of their own essential goodness," art critic Arthur C. Danto told Allison Adato of Life magazine. "And that is a very powerful thing." Film director Steven Spielberg remarked to Adato, "Growing up, we always subscribed to the Post. He [Rockwell] saw an America of such pride and self-worth. My vision is very similar to his, for the most part because of him."

Summers in the Country

Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894, in New York City. His father worked for a textile firm, starting as office boy and eventually moving up to manager of the New York office. His parents were very religious and the young Rockwell was a choir boy. Until he was about 10 years old the family spent its summers in the country, staying at farms that took in boarders. Rockwell recalled in his autobiography My Adventures as an Illustrator, "I have no bad memories of my summers in the country," and noted that his recollections "all together form[ed] an image of sheer blissfulness." He believed that these summers "had a lot to do with what I painted later on."

Rockwell enjoyed drawing at an early age and soon decided he wanted to be an artist. During his freshman year in high school, he also attended the Chase School on Saturdays to study art. Later that year he attended Chase twice a week. Halfway through his sophomore year, he quit high school and went full time to art school.

Started at Bottom in Art School

Rockwell enrolled first in the National Academy School and then attended the Art Students League. Because he was so dedicated and solemn when working at his art, he related in his autobiography, he was nicknamed "The Deacon" by the other students. In his first class with a live model, the location of his easel was not the best. The nude young woman was lying on her side and all Rockwell could see was her feet and rear end. So that is what he drew. Rockwell noted that, as Donald Walton wrote in his book A Rockwell Portrait, "he started his career in figure drawing from the bottom up."

At the Art Students League, Rockwell had two teachers who had a significant influence on him: George Bridgeman, a teacher of draftsmanship, and Thomas Fogarty, a teacher of illustration. Besides their expert instruction, Walton wrote, they conveyed their "enthusiasm about illustration."

While still at the school, Fogarty sent Rockwell to a publisher, where he got a job illustrating a children's book. He next received an assignment from Boys' Life magazine. The editor liked his work and continued to give him illustration assignments. Eventually Rockwell was made art director of the magazine. He regularly illustrated various other children's magazines after that. "I really didn't have much trouble getting started," he remarked in his autobiography. "The kind of work I did seemed to be what the magazines wanted."

Paintings Made the Post

In March of 1916, Rockwell traveled to Philadelphia to attempt to see George Horace Lorimer, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, to show him some proposed cover paintings and sketches. It was his dream to do a Post cover. So he set out to sell Lorimer on his work. Since he did not have an appointment, the art editor came out and looked at his work, then showed it to Lorimer. The editor accepted Rockwell's two finished paintings for covers and also liked his three sketches for future covers. Rockwell had sold everything; his dream was not just realized but exceeded. This was the start of a long-term relationship with the Post.

His success with the Post made Rockwell more attractive to other major magazines and he began to sell paintings and drawings to Life, Judge, and Leslie's. Also in 1916 he married Irene O'Connor, a schoolteacher.

In 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I, Rockwell decided to join the navy. He was assigned to the camp newspaper, related Walton, and he was able to continue doing his paintings for the Post and other publications. When the war ended in 1918, Rockwell got an immediate discharge.

Top Cover Artist

After the war, besides magazine works, Rockwell started doing advertising illustration. He did work for Jell-O, Willys cars, and Orange Crush soft drinks, among others. Also in 1920, he was requested to paint a picture for the Boy Scout calendar. He would continue to provide a picture for the popular calendar for over 50 years. During the 1920s, Rockwell became the Post's top cover artist and his income soared. In 1929 he was divorced from his wife Irene.

In 1930, Rockwell married Mary Barstow. They had three sons over the next several years. In 1939, the family moved to a 60-acre farm in Arlington, Vermont. In 1941, the Milwaukee Art Institute gave Rockwell his first one-man show in a major museum.

Four Freedoms

After President Franklin Roosevelt made his 1941 address to Congress setting out the "four essential human freedoms," Rockwell decided to paint images of those freedoms, reported Maynard Good Stoddard of the Saturday Evening Post. With the U.S. entry into World War II. Rockwell created the four paintings during a six-month period in 1942. His "Four Freedoms" series was published in the Post in 1943. The painting portrayed Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. The pictures became greatly popular and many other publications sent the Post requests to reprint.

Then the federal government took the original paintings on a national tour to sell war bonds. As Ben Hibbs, editor of the Post, noted in Rockwell's autobiography, "They were viewed by 1,222,000 people in 16 leading cities and were instrumental in selling $132,992,539 worth of bonds." Then, in 1943, his studio burned to the ground. Rockwell lost some original paintings, drawings, and his extensive collection of costumes. The family then settled in nearby West Arlington.

Wide Array of Work

Over the years Rockwell did illustrations for an ever-widening array of projects. He did commemorative stamps for the Postal Service. He worked on posters for the Treasury Department, the military, and Hollywood movies. He did mail-order catalogs for Sears and greeting cards for Hallmark, and illustrated books including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In 1953, Rockwell and family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In the summer of 1959, his wife Mary suffered a heart attack and died. During the 1960s, Rockwell painted portraits of various political figures, including all of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Most of these were done for Look magazine. In 1961, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts. That same year he received an award that he especially treasured, wrote Walton. He was given the Interfaith Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his Post cover paining of the Golden Rule. Also in 1961, Rockwell married a retired schoolteacher by the name of Molly Punderson.

Rockwell's last Post cover appeared in December of 1963. Over the years he had done 317 covers. The magazine's circulation was shrinking at that time and new management decided to switch to a new format. After Rockwell and the Post parted ways, he began a different assignment, painting news pictures for Look. He also started painting for McCall's.

People's Choice

In 1969 Rockwell had a one-man show in New York City. Art critics often were less than flattering toward Rockwell's work; if they did not knock him, they ignored him. But the public loved his paintings and many were purchased for prices averaging around $20,000. Thomas Buechner wrote in Life, "It is difficult for the art world to take the people's choice very seriously." Rockwell himself said to Walton, "I could never be satisfied with just the approval of the critics, and, boy, I've certainly had to be satisfied without it."

In 1975, at the age of 81, Rockwell was still painting, working on his 56th Boys Scout calendar. In 1976 the city of Stockbridge celebrated a Norman Rockwell Day. On November 8, 1978, Rockwell died in his home in Stockbridge.

Buechner noted that Rockwell's art "has been reproduced more often than all of Michelangelo's Rembrandt's and Picasso's put together." In 1993, a new Rockwell museum was opened just outside of Stockbridge. Museum director Laurie Norton Moffatt cataloged his art in a two-volume book, wrote Landrum Bolling of the Saturday Evening Post, and listed over 4,000 original works. As Walton wrote, throughout his life, Rockwell followed the motto: "Don't worry; just work."

Further Reading

Life, November 13, 1970, p. 16; July 1993, pp. 84-91.

Newsweek, April 12, 1993, pp. 58-59.

Moline, Mary, Norman Rockwell Encyclopedia: A Chronological Catalog of the Artist's Work 1910-1978, Curtis Publishing Company, 1979.

Walton, Donald, A Rockwell Portrait, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1978.

Saturday Evening Post, 1994, pp. 40-43, 74-76; 1995, pp. 60-64.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1960); biographical study by T. S. Buechner (1970); biography by L. Claridge (2001).

A twentieth-century American artist and illustrator, known for his warm-hearted paintings of rural and small-town life in the United States. Many of his paintings appeared as cover illustrations for the magazine The Saturday Evening Post.

Norman Rockwell
Birth name	Norman Percevel Rockwell
Born	(1894-02-03)February 3, 1894 New York City
Died	November 8, 1978(1978-11-08) (aged 84) Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, illustrator
Training	National Academy of Design Art Students League
Works	Willie Gillis Saying Grace Four Freedoms
Influenced	Alex Ross[1]

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades.^[2] Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter (although his Rosie was reproduced less than others of the day), Saying Grace (1951), The Problem We All Live With, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his work for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA); producing covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, other illustrations, and for his covers on the Saturday Evening Post, a magazine edited by George Horace Lorimer.

Contents 1 Body of work 1.1 Influence 2 Major works 3 Gallery 4 Other collections 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Body of work

His first Scouting calendar (1925)

Norman Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing over 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his works are either in public collections, or have been destroyed in fire or other misfortunes. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate over 40 books including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts' calendars between 1925 and 1976 (Rockwell was a 1939 recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America^[3]), were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow that were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's œuvre as an illustrator.

The Problem We All Live With

In 1969, as a tribute to Rockwell's 75th year birthday, officials of Brown & Bigelow and the Boy Scouts of America asked Rockwell to pose in Beyond the Easel, the calendar illustration that year.^[4]

Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime.^[5] Many of his works appear overly sweet in modern critics' eyes,^[6] especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life— this has led to the often-deprecatory adjective "Rockwellesque." Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious painter" by some contemporary artists, who often regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov sneered that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his book Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnapped by Gypsies in babyhood". He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as it was what he called himself.^[7]

Beyond the Easel, 1969 calendar

However, in his later years, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism for Look magazine.^[8] One example of this more serious work is The Problem We All Live With, which dealt with the issue of school racial integration. The painting depicts a young African American girl, Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti.^[9]

In 1999, The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl said of Rockwell in ArtNews: “Rockwell is terrific. It’s become too tedious to pretend he isn’t.”^[5]

Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001.^[10] Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties sold for $15.4 million at a 2006 Sotheby’s auction.^[5] A twelve-city U.S. tour of Rockwell's works took place in 2008.^[11]

Influence

Cover of October 1920 issue of Popular Science magazine

• In the film Empire of the Sun, a young boy (played by Christian Bale), is put to bed by his loving parents in a scene also inspired by a Rockwell painting—a reproduction of which is later kept by the young boy during his captivity in a prison camp. (Freedom from Fear, 1943).^[12]
• The 1994 film Forrest Gump includes a shot in a school that re-creates Rockwell's Girl with Black Eye with young Forrest in place of the girl. Much of the film drew heavy visual inspiration from Rockwell's art.^[13]
• Film director George Lucas owns Rockwell's original of The Peach Crop, and his colleague Steven Spielberg owns a sketch of Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait. Each of the artworks hangs in the respective filmmakers' workspaces.^[5] Rockwell is a major character in an episode of Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, “Passion for Life.”
• In 2005, Target Co. sold Marshall Field's to Federated Department Stores and the Federated discovered a reproduction of Rockwell's The Clock Mender, which depicted the great clocks of the Marshall Field and Company Building on display.^[14][15] Rockwell had donated the painting depicted on the cover of the November 3, 1945 Saturday Evening Post to the store in 1948.^[16]
• On Norman Rockwell's birthday, February 3, 2010, Google featured Rockwell's iconic image of young love "Boy and Girl Gazing at the Moon" which is also known as "Puppy Love" on its home page. The response was so great that day that the Norman Rockwell museum's servers went down under the onslaught.^{[citation needed]}
• "Dreamland," a track from Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace's 2009 album Burn Burn, was inspired by Rockwell's paintings.^[17]

Major works

• Scout at Ship's Wheel (first published magazine cover illustration, Boys' Life, September 1913)
• Santa and Scouts in Snow (1913)
• Boy and Baby Carriage (1916; first Saturday Evening Post cover)
• Circus Barker and Strongman (1916)
• Gramps at the Plate (1916)
• Redhead Loves Hatty Perkins (1916)
• People in a Theatre Balcony (1916)
• Tain't You (1917; first Life magazine cover)
• Cousin Reginald Goes to the Country (1917; first Country Gentleman cover)
• Santa and Expense Book (1920)
• Mother Tucking Children into Bed (1921; first wife Irene is the model)

The Rookie, one of many Saturday Evening Post covers

• No Swimming (1921)
• Santa with Elves (1922)
• Doctor and Doll (1929)
• Deadline (1938)
• The Four Freedoms (1943)
  • Freedom of Speech (1943)
  • Freedom of Worship (1943)
  • Freedom from Want (1943)
  • Freedom from Fear (1943)
• Rosie the Riveter (1943)^[18]
• Going and Coming (1947)
• Bottom of the Sixth (or The Three Umpires; 1949)
• Saying Grace (1951)
• The Young Lady with the Shiner (1953)
• Girl at Mirror (1954)
• Breaking Home Ties (1954)^[19]
• The Marriage License (1955)
• The Scoutmaster (1956)^[20]
• The Runaway (1958)
• A Family Tree (1959)
• Triple Self-Portrait (1960)
• Golden Rule (1961)
• The Problem We All Live With (1964)
• Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi) (1965)^[21]
• New Kids in the Neighborhood (1967)
• Russian Schoolroom (1967)
• The Rookie
• Spirit of 76 (1976) (stolen in 1978 but recovered in 2001 by the FBI's Robert King Wittman)

Gallery

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• 
• 

Other collections

• Norman Rockwell WWII posters, hosted by the University of North Texas Libraries Digital Collections
• Rockwell Collection at the National Museum of American Illustration

See also

	World War I portal
	Scouting portal

• James K. Van Brunt, a frequent model for Rockwell
• Norman Rockwell's World... An American Dream, a 1972 short documentary film

References

1. ^ "Alex Ross Biography". alexrossart.com. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
2. ^ About the Saturday Evening Post^{[dead link]}
3. ^ Official List of Silver Buffalo award Recipients (Retrieved July 17, 2007)
4. ^ William Hillcourt (1977). Norman Rockwell's World of Scouting. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-1582-0. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Jim Windolf (February 2008). "Keys to the Kingdom". Vanityfair.com. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/02/indianajones200802?currentPage=5. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
6. ^ "Solomon, Deborah, In Praise of Bad Art". New York Times. January 24, 1999. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9405E1DE1530F937A15752C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
7. ^ "Art of Illustration". Norman Rockwell Museum. http://www.nrm.org./page38. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
8. ^ "Norman Rockwell Wins Medal of Freedom". Massmoments.org. http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=13. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
9. ^ Miller, Michelle (November 12, 2010). "Ruby Bridges, Rockwell Muse, Goes Back to School". CBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS Interactive Inc.). http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/12/eveningnews/main7049471.shtml. Retrieved November 13, 2010. 
10. ^ Norman Rockwell at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.^{[dead link]}
11. ^ "Rockwell and Csatari: A tour de force". Scouting magazine: 6. March–April, 2008. 
12. ^ Gates, Anita (November 24, 1999). "Looking Beyond the Myth-Making Easel of Mr. Thanksgiving". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E1D9113CF937A15752C1A96F958260. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
13. ^ RICHARD CORLISS (June 24, 2001). "The World According to Gump". Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,164845,00.html. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
14. ^ Aronovich, Hannah (April 20, 2006). "Field's, Federated and More Feuds". Gothamist. http://chicagoist.com/2006/04/20/fields_federated_and_more_feuds.php. Retrieved April 4, 2008. 
15. ^ "Norman Rockwell Of Field's Store Goes Missing". NBC5.com. April 21, 2006. http://www.nbc5.com/news/8882622/detail.html. Retrieved April 4, 2008. 
16. ^ Aronovich, Hannah (April 20, 2006). "Field's, Federated and More Feuds". Gothamist. http://chicagoist.com/2006/04/20/fields_federated_and_more_feuds.php. Retrieved September 21, 2009. 
17. ^ "Dreamland". Songfacts.com. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=19441. Retrieved May 5, 2010. 
18. ^ "Rosie the Riveter". Rosie the Riveter. http://www.rosietheriveter.org/painting.htm. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
19. ^ NRM, p. 109, http://www.nrm.org/page109 
20. ^ "The norman rockwell collection". Web.me.com. http://web.me.com/soderstrome/Norman_Rockwell/Photos.html. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 
21. ^ "Norman Rockwell: Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi)". Artchive.com. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/R/rockwell/rockwell_mississippi.jpg.html. Retrieved April 28, 2012. 

Further reading

• Buechner, Thomas S (1992). The Norman Rockwell Treasury. Galahad. ISBN 0-88365-411-3. 
• Finch, Christopher (1990). Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers. Abbeville Publishing Group. ISBN 0-89660-000-9. 
• Christopher, Finch (1985). Norman Rockwell's America. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. ISBN 0-8109-8071-1. 
• Gherman, Beverly (2000). Norman Rockwell: Storyteller with a Brush. ISBN 0-689-82001-1. 
• Hennessey, Maureen Hart; Larson, Judy L. (1999). Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-6392-2. 
• Rockwell, Tom (2005). Best of Norman Rockwell. Courage Books. ISBN 0-7624-2415-X. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Norman Rockwell

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Norman Rockwell

• Booknotes interview with Laura Claridge on Norman Rockwell: A Life, December 2, 2001.
• Gallery of classic graphic design featuring the illustrations of Norman Rockwell.
• The Image Library of signed and numbered Norman Rockwell prints
• Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work
• Norman Rockwell at Find a Grave
• Footage of Norman Rockwell sketching a couple
• America, Illustrated – by The New York Times
• Norman Rockwell: Once upon a time there Was the American Dream by Tiziano Thomas Dossena, Bridge Puglia USA, April 2011

v t e Norman Rockwell Paintings Breaking Home Ties Four Freedoms Freedom from Fear Freedom from Want Freedom of Speech Freedom of Worship The Problem We All Live With Russian Schoolroom Related links Willie Gillis Wikimedia  Norman Rockwell at Wikiquote  Norman Rockwell at Commons  Norman Rockwell at Wiktionary  Norman Rockwell at Wikibooks  Norman Rockwell at Wikisource  Norman Rockwell at Wikinews

Persondata
Name	Rockwell, Norman
Alternative names
Short description	Painter
Date of birth	February 3, 1894
Place of birth	New York City
Date of death	November 8, 1978
Place of death	Stockbridge, Massachusetts

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