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Norman Rockwell | |
|---|---|
 Rockwell in c. 1921 | |
| Born | Norman Percevel Rockwell February 3, 1894 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | November 8, 1978 (aged 84) |
| Education | National Academy of Design Art Students League |
| Known for |
|
| Notable work | |
| Spouse | Irene O'Connor
(m. 1916; div. 1930)Mary Barstow
(m. 1930; died 1959)Mary Leete "Mollie" Punderson
(m. 1961) |
| Children | 3 |
| Awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom |
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]
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]
- ^ "About Norman Rockwell". Norman Rockwell Museum. 2014. Archived from the original on July 6, 2014. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
- ^ "A Scout Is Reverent". National Scouting Museum. Boy Scouts of America. 2010. Archived from the original on June 10, 2013. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
- ^ "A Guiding Hand". National Scouting Museum. Boy Scouts of America. 2010. Archived from the original on June 10, 2013. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
- ^ "Official List of Silver Buffalo award Recipients". Scouting. Archived from the original on February 26, 2008. Retrieved July 17, 2007.
- ^ "Collecting Norman Rockwell in magazines with a focus on Norman Rockwell ads". CollectingOldMagazines.com. Archived from the original on July 22, 2016. Retrieved June 19, 2017.
- ^ Claridge 2001, p. 261.
- ^ Windolf, Jim (February 2008). "Keys to the Kingdom". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- ^ Solomon, Deborah (January 24, 1999). "In Praise of Bad Art". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on March 11, 2013. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- ^ Nabokov, Vladimir (1989) [1st pub. 1957]. Pnin. Random House. p. 96. ISBN 9780307787477.
- ^ "Art of Illustration". Norman Rockwell Museum. Archived from the original on January 6, 2009. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- ^ "Norman Rockwell Wins Medal of Freedom". Mass moments. Archived from the original on March 23, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- ^ Miller, Michelle (November 12, 2010). "Ruby Bridges, Rockwell Muse, Goes Back to School". CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on November 13, 2010. Retrieved November 13, 2010.
- ^ Ruby Bridges visits with the President and her portrait. July 15, 2011 – via YouTube.
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