Rockwell`s Illustrations Essay, Research Paper

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.

505

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