Norman P. Rockwell (1894 –1978)
“I showed the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.” - Norman Rockwell
Waiting for the Vet
3/29/1952
Norman Perceval Rockwell, The Saturday Evening Post’s most famous and prolific illustrator, is considered by many to be the greatest American artist of all time. He was a master storyteller via canvas and paint, and his works, capturing the triumphs and foibles of the common man, are as popular today as they were in decades past.
Rockwell’s talent flourished during a period referred to as “The Golden Age of Illustration”, when the nation enjoyed the brilliance of such illustrators as Winslow Homer, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth and Ellen Pyle. These artist’s works can today be found in the country’s most prestigious museums.
Born in New York City on February 3, 1894, Norman Rockwell always wanted to be an illustrator. His father worked for a textile firm, where he started at the bottom and eventually made his way to office manager of the New York office, was also an amateur artist. His mother was the daughter of an English painter. Some of Rockwell's fondest early memories were of summers spent in the country enjoying an adventuresome and carefree existence. His family took in boarders, leaving young Rockwell the freedom to spend his days as he wished. Rockwell recalled in his autobiography, "I have no bad memories of my summers in the country", and remarked that his recollection of this time "all together formed an image of sheer blissfulness." Many of his experiences during this special time are reflected in his later paintings.
Rockwell, it seems, was born to draw. He said, “…Boys who were athletes were expressing themselves fully. They had an identity, a recognized place among other boys. I didn’t have that. All I had was the ability to draw, which as far as I could see didn’t count for much. But because it was all I had, I began to make it my whole life. I drew all the time. Gradually my narrow shoulders, long neck, and pigeon toes became less important to me. I drew and drew and drew.”
During early high school he attended the Chase School of Fine and Applied Art on Saturdays and before long had increased this to twice a week. By 1909, at the age of 15, he left high school to devote his time exclusively to the pursuit of art at the National Academy of Design. One year later, he transferred to the Art Students’ League – the most liberal and exciting art school of its day - putting him firmly on the road to his future destiny. Two teachers during that period had a marked influence on his later work: George B. Bridgman, a teacher of draftsmanship, and Thomas Fogarty, a teacher of illustration.
Rockwell found success early. During his tenure at the Art League, he found his first commissioned job – a set of Christmas cards for a neighbor. The next year he illustrated his first book. By the time Rockwell was eighteen years old, he already had enough paying artwork to consider it his full-time job. While he was still at the Art League, Thomas Fogarty arranged a meeting, for Rockwell, with a publisher who hired Rockwell as art director of Boy’s Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts. In 1920, Rockwell was requested to paint a picture for the Boy Scout calendar. It was so popular he would continue to submit a yearly offering for the next 50 years. This began his freelance career illustrating a variety of young people’s publications.
At the age of 21, Rockwell’s family moved to New Rochelle, New York, a community whose residents included such famous illustrators as J. C. Leyendecker and his younger brother, Frank X. Leyendecker, and Howard Chandler Christy. There, Rockwell set up a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe and produced work for such magazines as Life, Literary Digest and Country Gentleman.
In 1916, the 22-year-old Rockwell published his first Saturday Evening Post cover, a commission considered to be the pinnacle of achievement for an illustrator. During their very first meeting, George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Post, agreed to use two finished paintings and approved three sketches for future use. This defining moment was the catalyst for a 47-year Rockwell/Post partnership that produced 322 covers and dozens of story illustrations, including such classics as “The Runaway”, “Doctor and the Doll”, and “Bottom of the Sixth”. Rockwell’s masterful illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post represented a simpler time in America’s history, a time of solid family values and honest, homespun virtues. A time when fresh-baked apple pies were set out on the windowsill to cool, when neighbors laughed with one another over a white picket fence, when small boys ventured off to the creek with fishing poles slung over their shoulders to enjoy the summer sun. For decades Rockwell’s art personified the American everyday lifestyle through the covers of The Saturday Evening Post magazine. Norman Rockwell’s artwork, which had an immense, loyal following, helped elevate The Saturday Evening Post to the status of “America’s magazine” boasting over 6,000,000 subscribers at its zenith.
Another union occurred in 1916 when Rockwell married Irene O’Conner, a schoolteacher. This partnership did not fair as well and ended in 1929.
The 1930’s and 1940’s are generally considered to be the most fruitful decades of Rockwell’s career. In 1930 he married Mary Barstow and the couple had three sons: Jarvis, Thomas and Peter. The family moved to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939 and Rockwell’s work began to reflect small-town American life more consistently. His personal life was changing as quickly as America changed, keeping his work from remaining static. Children became the focus of many of his covers, but slowly adults began to emerge as well. Two generations sharing a common experience became a regular theme. Although his work became synonymous with rural life, he comments in his biography that, "I doubt that I would have idealized the country if I had grown up as a farm boy." After all, his formative years were spent in New York City. Although not perfect, the country perspective seemed to exude a quality that was closer to man's real nature, more approachable and more authentic.
During WWI, the Navy refused Rockwell's enlistment request for being 8 pounds underweight. After a night of gorging himself on bananas, liquids and donuts he was mustered in. To his chagrin, he would be employed as a military artist, not a fighter. During the century's second world war, Rockwell learned that he could play a more important role with a pen than most can by sword.
In 1943, after toiling night and day at his easel for seven months and losing 15 pounds, Rockwell created four paintings based on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inspirational wartime State of the Union address which espoused four basic principles by which America is defined, The Four Freedoms (Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear). The paintings were reproduced in The Saturday Evening Post alongside essays by thinkers of the day, such as Booth Tarkington, Stephen Vincent Benét, William Durant and Carlos Bulosan. As an interpretation of the individual’s role in a democracy, Rockwell’s series proved enormously popular. The works toured the United States in an exhibition jointly sponsored by The Saturday Evening Post and the Treasury Department that raised more than $130 million for the war effort through the sale of war bonds.
Apart from the success of The Four Freedoms series, 1943 was a year of loss for Rockwell. A fire broke out in his Arlington studio, destroying numerous paintings and his collection of historic costumes and props. This was particularly painful because Rockwell always insisted on authenticity in his work and would spend countless hours scouring the countryside, attending auctions, and poking around country shops in search of the perfect piece to create the mood. The costumes that adorned his models were the result of painstaking hours in search of the perfect look that might further characterize the story within the picture. What you come to appreciate about Rockwell's work is the process he worked through to arrive at the finished piece. He deemed every aspect of this process important which is probably one of the secrets to his enduring success.
The Rockwell family moved from Arlington, Vermont, to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1953, a picturesque village in the Berkshire Hills. Six year later, his wife, Mary Barstow Rockwell unexpectedly died. Rockwell lived and worked in Stockbridge until his death in 1978. He produced thirty-eight (38) Saturday Evening Post covers while in Stockbridge from 1953 to 1963, and then turned his talents toward illustrations that dealt with American social issues. He tackled subject matter that was weighty and controversial, such as racial discrimination, poverty, desegregation, the Vietnam War and space travel. In 1960, in collaboration with his son, Tom, Norman Rockwell published an autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. The Saturday Evening Post carried parts of the best-selling book in a series of excerpts, one of which featured the famous picture, Triple Self-Portrait.
In 1961, Rockwell married Molly Punderson, a former teacher. At Molly’s urging to use his widespread popularity to influence positive social change, his art began to reflect subject matter relevant to the reality of the times. In 1964, Rockwell’s completed his first illustration for Look magazine. During his ten-year association with Look, Rockwell painted pictures illustrating some of his deepest concerns, including civil rights and America’s war on poverty. In 1965 he began to chronicle man’s travels to the moon.
In 1973 Rockwell established a trust to preserve his artistic legacy, placing his works under the custodianship of Stockbridge’s historic Old Corner House. The trust now forms the core of the permanent collection of The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge. In 1976, Rockwell added his Stockbridge studio and all its contents to the bequest. The following year, 1977, Rockwell received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his “vivid and affectionate portraits of our country.” There is no American artist so revered, so loved, and so collected as Norman Rockwell. He died peacefully at his home in Stockbridge on November 8, 1978, at the age of 84.
For over 60 years, Rockwell painted this country and its people with unabashed frankness and poignancy, giving us a living chronicle of our dreams, our aspirations and our lives.