Norman Percevel Rockwell, (1894-1978)
Norman Rockwell, circa 1921
Was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. 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, 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 and A Guiding Hand, among many others.
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 as well as painting the portraits for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. His portrait subjects 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), 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. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “God Bless the Hills”, which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell’s œuvre as an illustrator.
Rockwell’s work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, 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 book Pnin: “That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell’s twin brother kidnaped by gypsies in babyhood.” 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.
In his later years, however, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism for Look magazine. 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 a young black girl, Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti. This 1964 painting was displayed in the White House when Bridges met with President Barack Obama in 2011.
Early Life
Norman Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894, in New York, NY to Jarvis Waring Rockwell and Anne Mary “Nancy” Rockwell, born Hill. His earliest American ancestor was John Rockwell (1588–1662), from Somerset, England, who immigrated to colonial North America, probably in 1635, aboard the ship Hopewell and became one of the first settlers of Windsor, Connecticut. He had one brother, Jarvis Waring Rockwell, Jr., older by a year and a half. Jarvis Waring, Sr., was the manager of the New York office of a Philadelphia textile firm, George Wood, Sons & Company, where he spent his entire career.
“Freedom from Want”, 1943
Rockwell transferred from high school to the Chase Art School at the age of 14. He then went on to the National Academy of Design and finally to the Art Students League. There, he was taught by Thomas Fogarty, George Bridgman, and Frank Vincent DuMond; his early works were produced for St. Nicholas Magazine, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) magazine Boys’ Life, and other youth publications. As a student, Rockwell had some small jobs, including one as a supernumerary at the Metropolitan Opera. His first major artistic job came at age 18, illustrating Carl H. Claudy’s book Tell Me Why: Stories about Mother Nature.
After that, Rockwell was hired as a staff artist for Boys’ Life magazine. In this role, he received 50 dollars’ compensation each month for one completed cover and a set of story illustrations. It is said to have been his first paying job as an artist. At 19, he became the art editor for Boys’ Life, published by the Boy Scouts of America. He held the job for three years, during which he painted several covers, beginning with his first published magazine cover, Scout at Ship’s Wheel, which appeared on the Boys’ Life September 1913 edition.
Personal Life
Rockwell married his first wife, Irene O’Connor, in 1916. Irene was Rockwell’s model in Mother Tucking Children into Bed, published on the cover of The Literary Digest on January 19, 1921. The couple divorced in 1930.
Depressed, he moved briefly to Alhambra, California as a guest of his old friend Clyde Forsythe. There he painted some of his best-known paintings including The Doctor and the Doll. While there he met and married schoolteacher Mary Barstow in 1930. The couple returned to New York shortly after their marriage. They had three children: Jarvis Waring, Thomas Rhodes, and Peter Barstow. The family lived at 24 Lord Kitchener Road in the Bonnie Crest neighborhood of New Rochelle, New York.
Rockwell and his wife were not regular church attendees, although they were members of St. John’s Wilmot Church, an Episcopal church near their home, where their sons were baptized. Rockwell moved to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939 where his work began to reflect small-town life. He would later be joined by his good friend, John Carlton Atherton.
In 1953, the Rockwell family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, so that his wife could be treated at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital at 25 Main Street, close to where Rockwell set up his studio. Rockwell also received psychiatric treatment, seeing the analyst Erik Erikson, who was on staff at Riggs. Erikson is said to have told the artist that he painted his happiness, but did not live it. In 1959, Mary died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
Rockwell married his third wife, retired Milton Academy English teacher, Mary Leete “Mollie” Punderson (1896-1985), on October 25, 1961. His Stockbridge studio was located on the second floor of a row of buildings. Directly underneath Rockwell’s studio was, for a time in 1966, the Back Room Rest, better known as the famous “Alice’s Restaurant.” During his time in Stockbridge, chief of police William Obanhein was a frequent model for Rockwell’s paintings.
From 1961 until his death, Rockwell was a member of the Monday Evening Club, a men’s literary group based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. At his funeral, five members of the club served as pallbearers, along with Jarvis Rockwell.
Lineage
Relationship: seventh cousin once removed descending
Pearson Raymond Smith
mother
Margaret Allice Woods
mother
Seraphina O’Dell
father
Samuel Castleman O’Dell
father
Abraham O’Dell
father
James O’Dell
father
Samuel O’Dell
father
Samuel O’Dell
younger brother
John O’Dell
son
John O’Dell
son
Jonathan O’Dell
son
Abraham O’Dell
daughter
Rachel O’Dell
daughter
Nancy Odell Boyce
daughter
Phoebe Boyce Waring
son
Jarvis Waring Rockwell
son
Normal Percevel Rockwell
