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Norman Rockwell

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades.[1] Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life (now Scout Life), calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent,[2] and A Guiding Hand.[3]

Norman Rockwell

Norman Percevel Rockwell

(1894-02-03)February 3, 1894
New York City, U.S.

November 8, 1978(1978-11-08) (aged 84)

Irene O'Connor
(m. 1916; div. 1930)
Mary Barstow
(m. 1930; died 1959)
Mary Leete "Mollie" Punderson
(m. 1961)

3

Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his surviving works are in public collections. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate more than 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and to paint portraits of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. His portrait subjects also included Judy Garland. One of his last portraits was of Colonel Sanders in 1973. 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),[4] 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. He created artwork for advertisements for Coca-Cola, Jell-O, General Motors, Scott Tissue, and other companies.[5] Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy"[6] and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's oeuvre as an illustrator.


Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime.[7] Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics,[8] 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 regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov stated that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his novel Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnaped by gypsies in babyhood."[9] He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as that was what he called himself.[10]


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.[11] 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 Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti.[12] This 1964 painting was displayed in the White House when Bridges met with President Barack Obama in 2011.[13]

In "" (1977) Alvy (Woody Allen) teases Annie (Diane Keaton) saying: "What did you do, grow up in a Norman Rockwell painting?".

Annie Hall

In 1981, Rockwell's painting Girl at Mirror was used for the cover of 's fifth studio album Small Change.[65]

Prism

Rockwell is among the figures depicted in , The Telephone's 100th Birthday (1976) by Stanley Meltzoff for Bell System which Meltzoff based on Rockwell's 1948 painting The Gossips.[66]

Our Nation's 200th Birthday

In the film , 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).[67]

Empire of the Sun

The 1994 film 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.[68]

Forrest Gump

Film director 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 filmmaker's work space.[7] Rockwell is a major character in an episode of Lucas' The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, "Passion for Life", portrayed by Lukas Haas.[69]

George Lucas

Museum director said that Rockwell's art is important for standing the test of time, "When the last half century is explored by the future, a few paintings will continue to communicate with the same immediacy and veracity they have today."[70]

Thomas S. Buechner

In 2005, May Corporation, that previously bought from Target Corp., was bought by Federated Department Stores. After the sale, Federated discovered that Rockwell's The Clock Mender displayed in the store was a reproduction.[71][72] Rockwell had donated the painting, which depicts a repairman setting the time on one of the Marshall Field and Company Building clocks, and was depicted on the cover of the November 3, 1945 Saturday Evening Post, to the store in 1948.[71] Target had since donated the original to the Chicago History Museum.[73]

Marshall Field's

On an anniversary of Norman Rockwell's birth, on 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 were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic.

[74]

"Dreamland", a track from Canadian band Our Lady Peace's 2009 album Burn Burn, was inspired by Rockwell's paintings.[75]

alternative rock

The cover for the album Only a Lad is a parody of the Boy Scouts of America 1960 official handbook cover illustrated by Rockwell.[76]

Oingo Boingo

named her sixth studio album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019), after Rockwell.[77]

Lana Del Rey

A custodianship of his original paintings and drawings was established with Rockwell's help near his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Norman Rockwell Museum still is open today year-round.[59] The museum's collection includes more than 700 original Rockwell paintings, drawings, and studies. The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies at the Norman Rockwell Museum is a national research institute dedicated to American illustration art.[60]


Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001.[61][62] Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties sold for $15.4 million at a 2006 Sotheby's auction.[7] A 12-city U.S. tour of Rockwell's works took place in 2008.[29] In 2008, Rockwell was named the official state artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.[63] The 2013 sale of Saying Grace for $46 million (including buyer's premium) established a new record price for Rockwell.[64] Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Reading Public Museum and the Church History Museum in 2013–2014.

(1918)

Children Dancing at a Party

(1926)

The Love Song

The Four Freedoms

(1943)

Rosie the Riveter

(1944)

Little Girl Observing Lovers on a Train

(1944)

We, Too, Have a Job to Do

(1946)

Working on the Statue of Liberty

(1948)

Tough Call

(1951)

Saying Grace

(1953)

Walking to Church

(1954)

Breaking Home Ties

(1955)

Marriage License

(1956)

The Scoutmaster

(1957)

The Rookie

The Runaway (1958)

(1960)

Triple Self-Portrait

Golden Rule (1961)

The Connoisseur (1962)

(1964)

Growth of a Leader

(1964)

The Problem We All Live With

Murder in Mississippi

New Kids in the Neighborhood (1967)

(1967)

Russian Schoolroom

The Spirit of 1976 (1976)

(1938)[78]

The Adventures of Marco Polo

(1942)[79]

The Magnificent Ambersons

(1943)[80]

The Song of Bernadette

(1945)[79]

Along Came Jones

(1946)[79]

The Razor's Edge

(1960)[81]

Cinderfella

(1966)[82]

Stagecoach

Rockwell provided illustrations for several film posters.


He designed an album cover for The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969).[83] He was also commissioned by English musician David Bowie to design the cover artwork for his 1975 album Young Americans, but the offer was retracted after Rockwell informed him he would need at least half a year to complete a painting for the album.[84]

in Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Norman Rockwell Museum

Rockwell Collection at the

National Museum of American Illustration

Rockwell illustrations for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the

Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal MO.

Norman Rockwell World War II posters, hosted by the Libraries Digital Collections

University of North Texas

Norman Rockwell and the Art of Scouting at the , Irving, Texas[85]

National Scouting Museum

Norman Rockwell Exhibit in [86]

Arlington, Vermont

Hall of Fame, first inductee 1958[87]

Society of Illustrators

Rockwell's predecessor and stylistic inspiration

J. C. Leyendecker

a frequent model for Rockwell

James K. Van Brunt

another one of Rockwell's models who would later become famous elsewhere

William Obanhein

, a 1972 short documentary film

Norman Rockwell's World... An American Dream

Claridge, Laura P. (2001). . New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50453-2 – via the Internet Archive (registration required).

Norman Rockwell: A Life

Gherman, Beverly (2000). . New York: Atheneum Books. ISBN 978-0-689-82001-4 – via the Internet Archive (registration required).

Norman Rockwell: Storyteller with a Brush

Moline, Mary (1979). . Indianapolis: Curtis Publishing Company. ISBN 0-89387-032-3 – via the Internet Archive (registration required).

Norman Rockwell Encyclopedia: A Chronological Catalog of the Artist's Work, 1910–1978

Buechner, Thomas S (1992). The Norman Rockwell Treasury. Galahad.  978-0-88365-411-8.

ISBN

Carson, Tom (February 26, 2020). . Vox.

"The awakening of Norman Rockwell"

Finch, Christopher (1990). Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers. . ISBN 978-0-89660-000-3.

Abbeville

Christopher, Finch (1985). Norman Rockwell's America. . ISBN 978-0-8109-8071-6.

Harry N Abram

Hennessey, Maureen Hart; Larson, Judy L. (1999). . Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-6392-4.

Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People

Rockwell, Tom (2005). Best of Norman Rockwell. Courage Books.  978-0-7624-2415-3.

ISBN

Schick, Ron (2009). Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. Little, Brown & Co.  978-0-316-00693-4.

ISBN

Solomon, Deborah (July 1, 2010). . The New York Times.

"America, Illustrated"

C-SPAN

Booknotes interview with Laura Claridge on Norman Rockwell: A Life, December 2, 2001

Archived October 16, 2021, at the Wayback Machine from the TJS Labs Gallery of Graphic Design

Collection of mid-twentieth century advertising featuring Norman Rockwell illustrations

at Library of Congress, with 127 library catalog records

Norman Rockwell

at Curlie

Rockwell, Norman

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell Museum website