Rockwell`s Illustrations
In America, artists’ works are not only
shown in museums, they are often
displayed on magazine covers. Norman
Rockwell produced cover paintings for the
Saturday Evening Post, a major
magazine of the 1910’s and for many decades
later. In the process he became a
nationally renowned artist. His precise detail
brought him great 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 saw an
America of such pride and self-worth. My vision is very
similar to his, for
the most part because of him." When people use the
expression "as American as
apple pie" they could just as well say as
American as a Norman Rockwell
painting. Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894,
in New York City. His father
worked for the 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 ten
years old the family
spent its summers in the country, staying at farms.
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
formed 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.
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 her 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 form 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
school, Fogarty sent Rockwell to a publisher,
where he got a job illustrating a
children’s book. He next received an
assignment from Boy’s 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 magazines wanted." 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 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. After the war, besides magazine works
Rockwell started
advertising illustration. He did work for Jell-O, Willys cars,
and Orange
Crush soft drinks, among others. Also in 1920, he requested to paint
a
picture for the Boy Scout calendar. He would continue to provide a picture
for
the popular calendar for over fifty years. During the 1920’s, 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
sixty-acre farm in
Arlington, Vermont. In 1941, the Milwaukee Art
Institute gave Rockwell his first
one-man show in a major museum. 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 of Want, and Freedom
from Fear. The pictures
became greatly popular and many other publications sent
the Post requests to
print. 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 sixteen
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 exclusive collection of costumes. The
family
then settled in nearby West Arlington. 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 1960’s, 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 painting 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. In
1969
Rockwell had done 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 $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
fifty-sixth 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.
Bibliography
Moline, Mary, Norman
Rockwell Encyclopedia: A Chronological
Catalog of the Artist’s Work
1910-1978, Curtis Publishing Company, 1979
Rockwell, Norman: My
Adventures as an Illustrator, Curtis Publishing Company
Walton, Donald, A
Rockwell Portrait, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1978 Life,
November
13,1970, p.16; July 1993, pp. 84-91. Newsweek, April 12,1993, pp.
58-59
Saturday Evening Post, May 1994, pp 40-43