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1894
- 1978
“I'm not a historian. I just painted the things I saw around me. I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.” Rockwell truly reflected the currents of American life and times, from his earliest drawings to the patriotic themes of World War II to more politically oriented themes in his later years. His genius was in being able to capture the essence of what is now considered largely “an America vanished.” Before the media revolution people looked forward to and identified with Norman Rockwell magazine covers. They captured the emotions of the times, not only that which was, but also what people would have liked life to be. Unfortunately, many people know 'the look' of Norman Rockwell art, but not the art. Furthermore, most know it only from reproductions of the art or commercial exploitations such as: cartoon-like figurines, beer mugs, serving trays, or other licensed reprographics. Yet one look at an original painting will make apparent the quality of his technique, style, and craftsmanship.
Born in New York City, Rockwell spent his childhood and adolescence there, with significant summer excursions into the country. He felt a strong sense of connectedness not only with nature, but also with the people who had chosen to live “on nature's terms.” Rockwell's early inspiration to draw and paint came from his father, an avid Sunday painter. It also came indirectly from his grandfather's primitive canvases of bucolic barnyard scenes. He studied painting at the newly formed Arts Students League where he was taught anatomical accuracy by George Bridgeman and learned composition from Thomas Fogarty.
The most popular and fashionable illustrators of the time; N.C. Wyeth, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish, and Howard Pyle, were powerful influences on Norman Rockwell's development as an artist. Among the paintings by other artists hanging in his studio were several Pyles, a Leyendecker and a Parrish. The Parrish is a self-portrait of the artist sitting at his easel in a side view. It is thought that the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge’s logo derived from‘The Triple Self-Portrait’ was directly inspired by that Parrish work. Rockwell sometimes took good ideas from other artists whom he admired. Another such example, is his ‘Shave and a Haircut’(1940) taken directly from James Montgomery Flagg’s ‘A Man of Affairs’ (1913). In Rockwell's early years, he studied every magazine with Howard Pyle's illustrations. His admiration for J. C. Leyendecker was even more obsessive. In 1915, after completing his studies in New York City, Rockwell moved to New Rochelle just to be near Leyendecker. He even rented a studio in the same building and they shared models, including the indomitable, Pops Fredericks.
At twenty-two Rockwell sold his first cover piece to The Saturday Evening Post - a prized commission for an illustrator. It was the beginning of a 321-cover relationship between Rockwell and the Post, one fewer than Leyendecker. As late as 1919, four-color printing was still very expensive, and most popular storytelling magazine covers were produced in limited color. Like his predecessor, Howard Pyle, whose chronicles of pirates and revolutionary days were printed in black and white, Rockwell met the editorial requirements by painting the early originals without color, yet reproduced from fully executed paintings. Ultimately, five of his covers for Farm and Fireside, the nation's farm magazine were printed between l9l8 and l922. These scenes were painted in the red, black and white colors commonly used in his early work.
In a sense, Rockwell was the last of the 19th-century genre painters, but one who came into his creative powers at a time when a new audience and a new market was opening up. Mass-circulated national magazines with great popularity catapulted certain artists into millions of households weekly and Rockwell clearly had the right talent at the right time. In the 1920s and 1930s, Rockwell's work developed more breadth and greater character. His use of humor, which had already been developed in the character of 'Cousin Reginald' (a young boy who was
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Photo: The
Society of Illustrators
always prim and proper), became an important part of his work. It was a technique he used effectively to draw the viewer into the composition to share the magic of the moment between viewer and artist.
Rockwell was constantly seeking new ideas and new faces in his daily life. He wrote that everything he had ever seen or done had gone into his pictures. He painted not only the scenes and people close to him but, in a quest for authenticity, would approach total strangers and ask them to sit for him. His internal art of 'storytelling' became integrated with his external skills as an artist. What emerged was what we know today as an incredible facility in judging the perfect moment; when to stop the action, snap the picture...when all the elements that define and embellish a total story are in place.
In 1936, Editor George Horace Lorimer retired from The Saturday Evening Post, and the second of two successive editors, Ben Hibbs, altered the circular format of the cover. In fact, Hibbs permitted Norman Rockwell to create with more freedom within a different cover layout. The new mood of both the magazine and the country was reflected in Rockwell's work, as he used the entire cover, unconfined by borders and logos, to express himself.
In the 1940s, Rockwell moved to Arlington, Vermont, where he started to paint the full-canvas paintings that are increasingly treasured by collectors today. With Grandma Moses as a friend and neighbor and local townspeople as his models, Rockwell became a living part of Americana - a national treasure. His painting, ‘The Bridge Game’ is from this period and it captures the players from a rather unique overhead perspective, four Arlington townspeople at a popular local recreational activity - playing cards. During his Vermont years he flourished, but always within the framework of being an illustrator. Norman Rockwell was acutely aware of his goals as an artist and his lack of critical acceptance. During World War II, Rockwell joined the legion of artists and writers involved in the war effort to help boost the sale of savings bonds. He tried to explain through his art, what the war was all about. The result of his efforts was ‘The Four Freedoms,’ at first rejected by the government and then printed as posters by the millions to sell war bonds.
In the 1960s, from his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Rockwell struck out in a new direction. Though by then his reputation was rooted in the evocation of nostalgia, he boldly tackled political issues. ‘The Peace Corps in Ethiopia’ captured the idealism of the Kennedy years in a realistic setting. He painted portraits of President Kennedy, but also of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Johnson as well as portraits of other world leaders including Nehru of India and Nassar of Egypt.
In 1962, Rockwell was quoted in Esquire magazine as saying: "I call myself an illustrator but I am not an illustrator. Instead I paint storytelling pictures which are quite popular but unfashionable." "Unfashionable" was a misnomer; his works were in fact very popular, but he was extremely sensitive to the way the art world as well as the public judged him. "No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He's got to put all of his talent, all of his feeling into them. If illustration is not considered art, then that is something that we have brought upon ourselves by not considering ourselves artists. I believe that we should say, 'I am not just an illustrator, I am an artist."
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