Introduction (left of gallery entrance)
Rockwell / Wyeth: Icons of Americana
In the annals of the 20th century, there are few bigger or more celebrated figures in American art than Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth. Despite their once having been held in lower art historical esteem — deprecated as not “fine artists” — because their principal work took the form of illustration for popular media, Rockwell and Wyeth gained their own popularity for that very reason. They were household names, more familiar and beloved to Americans nationwide than virtually any other artists of their era. Indeed, unlike art created for collectors and aspiring for showcase in galleries and museums, magazine and book illustration was accessible to all and seen by all, and the artists who created illustrations for major publishers gained extraordinary levels of fame. And Rockwell and Wyeth are the superstars of American illustration history.
But, as this exhibition makes clear, Rockwell (1894-1978) and Wyeth (1882-1945) were also undeniably fine artists in their own regard — and not merely fine artists but extraordinary painters, who created their most recognizable images full-size in paint before the scenes were scaled for print publication. The 40 paintings in this exhibition underline both artists’ ability to convey realist themes that spoke both to the everyday American and to the shifting interests and mores of American society at large.
Born 12 years apart, Wyeth and Rockwell rose to fame in different eras and with distinct styles; Wyeth is most frequently recalled for his early-20th-century Scribner Classics book covers and illustrations, while Rockwell stands as the towering figure of American magazine cover illustration, nearly synonymous with The Saturday Evening Post, for which he contributed 321 unique covers (the complete spectacular array of which appear in this exhibition). Both artists’ bodies of work extend far beyond their best-known illustrations, though, and this exhibition, fittingly titled Rockwell/Wyeth: Icons of Americana, explores their unmistakably American art side by side, examining the finesse with which each artist was able to cater both to the clients who commissioned their work and to the consumers who came to adore it.
This original and exclusive large-scale exhibition — taking over our main first floor galleries — is produced in partnership with the National Museum of American Illustration and promises to bathe many visitors in nostalgia for their own childhood memories of these artists and to introduce new audiences to two true icons of American art.
Dorothy Jenkins Gallery
N.C. Wyeth’s American Storybook
Less of a household name today than Rockwell, N.C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth (1882-1945) remains nevertheless one of the most successful illustrators of all time. For generations of American readers young and old, Wyeth was seen as the illustrator of American novels; his name on a cover touting “illustrated by N.C. Wyeth” was not only commonplace in the first half of the 20th century but also carried great weight — and sold books.
Born in Needham, Massachusetts, Wyeth showed an early passion for art, and, by 1902 at 20 years old, he was studying under the great American illustrator — and so- dubbed “Father of American Illustration” — Howard Pyle in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Pyle encouraged his students to immerse themselves in the worlds they hoped to bring to life in their art. Fascinated with the American frontier, Wyeth did just that, traveling to the West, where he lived with the Ute and Navajo peoples, drove and herded cattle, became a mail-carrier, and documented all his experiences in meticulous drawings. Upon his return east, Wyeth’s artwork was sought after, published at an astonishing rate, and established for many viewers their first illustrated visions of the American West.
While his career included more than 4,000 illustrations for books and magazines like The Saturday Evening Post (where Rockwell cements his celebrity), much of Wyeth’s art embraced this reputation-establishing American Western theme, filled with cowboys and Native Americans, gun fighters, and gold miners. Pirates and knights were in his wheelhouse, too: Wyeth also illustrated popular children’s books and novels like Treasure Island and Tom Sawyer — defining for generations the visual images of favorite characters in readers’ minds.
Despite his fame as an illustrator, Wyeth yearned to be respected as a fine painter (which, as this exhibition underlines, he was, even as an illustrator). He tried to escape the confines of commercial work with personal paintings, but, sadly, Wyeth never attained the personal satisfaction or public recognition he so wanted. On October 19, 1945, at 62 years old, Wyeth died tragically at a railroad crossing near his home in Chadds Ford, when an oncoming train hit his car. Wyeth’s legacy extends far beyond his own work, though: as the patriarch of a dynasty of celebrated American artists, he was also the father of painter Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of painter Jamie Wyeth.
N. C. Wyeth
Archers in Battle, 1922
Oil on canvas
Inscribed: “To Edward Warwick from Wyeth” lower right
The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, David McKay Company, 1922
Originally published in 1891, The White Company — written by none other than Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame — was a very popular novel through the 1940s, although it is relatively unknown today. Doyle actually considered this book to be better and more of a success than his series of Holmes novels, for which he is so highly regarded today. For the 1922 reprinting of this historical tale, Wyeth adorns the cover with an action-filled scene of the titular group of archers in the midst of battle. The central archer prepares to release his arrow, creating a strong dynamic diagonal across the canvas as a flurry of arrows flies through the sky behind him.
Norman Rockwell’s “America”
Arguably the best-known, certainly the most familiar, and perhaps the most beloved American artist of the 20th century, Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) lived and worked through one of the most eventful periods in the nation’s history, and his paintings vividly chronicled those times.
Rockwell’s images often served as mirrors of and to American life and American aspirations; nostalgic now and romanticizing even then, any given Rockwell illustration reflects less who “we as Americans” once were collectively, so much as what many Americans thought, felt, and subconsciously endeavored to become.
Despite being born in New York City, Rockwell gave painted life to stories that evoke small-town America. Frequently idealized, folksy, humorous, and often topical at the same time, Rockwell’s most celebrated illustrations are scenes seemingly plucked out of a Main Street U.S.A that never quite was — a vision of America that was not universally reflective of the experiences of most Americans but that appealed widely to his fans. In fact, Rockwell had a genius for knowing his target audiences — principally the newsstand buyers and magazine subscribers who saw his work in print — and which stories to tell, how to tell them, and what details to emphasize. It has been said that a Rockwell painting does not require an explanation, a caption, or even a title — it speaks to us directly (and often movingly).
In 1916, at the age of 22, he painted his first cover for the prestigious Saturday Evening Post magazine, beginning a nearly-five decade run with the publication. Most readers immediately recognized Rockwell’s covers and adored his charming portraits of American life. Rockwell’s Post covers — 321 in total and all on view in this exhibition — and his immensely popular Four Freedoms posters (which first appeared in the Post and original versions of which are also on display here) became his greatest legacy; the artist parted ways with the Post in 1963, though, and began to work for Look magazine, where he found more creative freedom. His illustrations for Look included his first socially conscious work concerning civil rights, space travel, and other issues of national concern.
On November 8, 1978, Rockwell died at his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 84, leaving an unfinished painting on his easel. Some critics have called Rockwell’s art too sentimental to be taken seriously, but the fact that his work continues to resonate, demand interest and recontextualization, and find new audiences in the 21st century suggests otherwise.
Norman Rockwell
Full Treatment, 1940
Oil on canvas
The Saturday Evening Post, May 18, 1940 cover
A prime example of Rockwell cover art, Full Treatment is an excellent example of the artist’s light-hearted depictions of ordinary people in situations that are relatable to his audiences across the country. In 1940, barbershops played an integral role in Americans’ lives, both in small towns and large cities. Here the central figure has decided to treat himself to a full day of pampering including a shave, shoeshine, and manicure, all while enjoying a cigar. His pleasure in the activity is obvious and infectious, undoubtedly creating a smile on a viewer’s face. This painting is also noteworthy for Rockwell’s reversal of the use of white for a Post cover. While earlier Post covers maintained a white background with colorful figures at the center, here Rockwell renders the figures primarily in white — almost glowing — against a blue-green background. With commercial success in mind, Rockwell composes a painting that would — and did — make for a strikingly bold cover to be viewed on magazine racks across the country.
Norman Rockwell
Charwomen in Theater - Study, 1946
Oil paint over photographic base
The Saturday Evening Post, April 6, 1946 cover study
It just came to me. I think I have always wanted to paint a charwoman or some similar type of worker – the poor little drudge who has to tidy up after more fortunate people have had a good time ... Having decided on this charwomen subject and that the theatre is a logical setting, I made my little idea sketch. I decided to go to an actual theatre to obtain authentic information on such things as seats and aisles ... I went to the office of the Shubert Theatres in New York ... The Physical Properties Manager felt that the Majestic Theatre, where Carousel was playing, was typical, so we decided on that. A minor hitch came when I learned that just to turn on the lights would cost about forty dollars ... After considerable negotiation, a way was found to reduce this force to one electrician and his assistant. With this adjusted, off we went to the Majestic, where I sketched and measured while a photographer took some pictures – one never knows how much information he may need when he gets to work far from his original source ... Then back I hurried to Arlington where two neighbors, Mrs. Harvey McKee and Mrs. Charles Crofut, posed as the charwomen. I felt hesitant about asking them to represent such humble characters, but they were very good sports about it.
- Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Solitaire (Man in Bed Playing Solitaire), 1950
Oil on canvas
The Saturday Evening Post, August 19, 1950, cover
During the 1950s, readers continued to turn steadily to Post covers as reflections of the “American” way of life. Of course, the Americana portrayed in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post did not mirror every American’s experience nor reflected the realities of most Americans’ lives. Nevertheless, as the premier magazine cover artist of his era, Rockwell was the perfect artist to depict prototypical “American” figures, like the traveling salesman, the subject of this work. For this cover, Rockwell sought to dispel the myth that all commercial travelers (namely, male businessmen per the assumptions of the time) spent their nights with a cold beer and an alluring woman. Many readers wrote to the Post thanking them for his touching and honest portrayal of a lonely salesman. Rockwell went on to use the theme of the traveling salesman for a Brown & Bigelow Four Seasons calendar.
From Painting to Illustration
While Rockwell and Wyeth gained their renown from the familiarity and accessibility of their art as it appeared in print in popular commercial media, the illustrations they each produced for books, magazine serials, advertisements, and covers began as paintings. Most of the public who saw their illustrations — and many viewers of their art today — would be surprised to learn that the small illustrations they cherished in print were actually photographic reproductions of large paintings.
To be certain, as seen throughout this exhibition, Rockwell and Wyeth were painters in every traditional sense of the term; they studied in art schools, worked in their studios, usually with models, created preparatory sketches, and painted naturalistically on full-size canvases. And just like the generations of academically-trained painters before them, the two artists depict scenes and settings that run the gamut from wholly imagined to fully grounded in the real world, depending on the parameters of a given project or the narrative moment they strived to depict.
But it is important to keep in mind that Rockwell and Wyeth’s paintings — while finished and undoubtedly works of art in their own regard — were also created from the outset with a different (smaller, less tactile) format and eventual presentation in mind. Upon setting out to produce an illustration — be it for a regular gig like The Saturday Evening Post for Rockwell or a book illustration commission like Anthony Adverse for Wyeth —both artists composed their paintings accordingly. Knowing that their paintings would serve as smaller-scale pictures to illustrate a story or to help sell a consumer product or magazine, Rockwell and Wyeth honed techniques that made their paintings easily legible — with regard both to precise detail and to the narrative the image tried to communicate — even at a shrunken size.
Different as they are in so many ways as painters, as we can see in the 40 paintings on view, Rockwell and Wyeth share a great gift for making art whose intent is to be understandable by wide audiences — and whose success lies in viewers’ easy ability to comprehend it.
Norman Rockwell
Willie Gillis - Cat’s Cradle, 1943
Oil on canvas
The Saturday Evening Post, June 26, 1943, cover
The most representative of Rockwell’s wartime covers for The Saturday Evening Post are the Willie Gillis series. There are eleven images in total – the first appearing on October 4, 1941, and the last on October 5, 1946. Rockwell said that this series grew out of his interest in “the plight of an inoffensive, ordinary little guy thrown into the chaos of war. He was not to be an avid, brave, blood-and-guts soldier, though a perfectly willing – if somewhat ineffective one.” At a square dance in Arlington, Vermont, Rockwell discovered Robert Buck, whom he thought would make an ideal model.
Cat’s Cradle depicts Gillis, Rockwell’s WWII “hero,” playing the children’s game Cat’s Cradle with a snake charmer. Clearly, the boyish GI has dumbfounded the snake charmer, “snake-charming” a performer whose very practice is mesmerizing innocent tourists with his own illusions.
Norman Rockwell
Cousin Reginald Plays Pirates, 1917
Oil on canvas on board
Country Gentleman, November 3, 1917, cover
As Rockwell began his career, he incorporated children into most of his illustrations; kids, he knew, could be picture-perfect agents for misbehavior, humor, and dilemma. The ongoing adventures and misfortunes of Cousin Reginald — a popular character in Rockwell’s Country Gentleman magazine covers — serve as a prime example. Claude Fitzhugh was the model for “Cousin Reginald,” a city boy who was often made the target of pranks by his country cousins. In Cousin Reginald Plays Pirates, Reginald and his mischievous relatives, modeled by Chick Peterkin and the Doolittle bothers, are pictured playing the common childhood game of pirates. Cousin Reginald is tied up and being charged by Rusty Doolittle, while his brother, Tubby, and Chuck assist with menacing glares. In the background, their dog Patsy has been set sail on their wooden raft.
Norman Rockwell
Harvest Moon - Study, ca. 1920s
Oil on canvas
Study for This Week, September 1935 cover
Harvest Moon is the first of only three Rockwell illustrations published on the cover of The Week, a magazine insert in newspapers around the United States. Although Harvest Moon was not published until September 1, 1935, it was originally commissioned for a different use in the 1920s. This earlier creation date explains the artwork’s early style and subject matter. A young couple share an innocent, tender moment sitting on a hayrick, the girl peering off-canvas with a slight look of shyness, while the boy remains entranced by her. Rockwell’s dark palette, with selective use of light to heighten the scene’s emotional content, combined with an emphasis on the intricacies of the lives of America’s youth is very typical of his illustrations throughout the 1920s.
Norman Rockwell
The Sneezing Spy (Boy Hiding Under Couch Sneezing), 1921
Oil on canvas
The Saturday Evening Post, October 1, 1921, cover
Appearing on the October 1, 1921, cover of The Saturday Evening Post, The Sneezing Spy highlights Rockwell’s popular theme of young romance. The teenage couple depicted here recur in several of Rockwell’s illustrations from the 1920s, allowing the audience to follow the progression of their courtship.
Rockwell employs his characteristic sympathetic humor to illustrate a moment when the lovers are disturbed suddenly by a younger brother who has been hiding beneath the couch. Rockwell infuses the scene with rich details, such as the Chinese drapery strewn over the arm of the daybed, and successfully incorporates the magazine’s standard cover format to create a fully realized scene, transporting his viewer to a specific time and place. The Sneezing Spy demonstrates not only the full extent of the artist’s technical precision and masterful draftsmanship but also his seemingly limitless imagination, making it a remarkable example of Rockwell’s unparalleled ability to elevate commercial endeavors into the aesthetic realm.
The Cover Artists
Can you judge a book by its cover? The publishers who commissioned Rockwell and Wyeth to create some of the most memorable book and magazine covers of all time sure hoped so. Perhaps more than in any other sphere, Rockwell and Wyeth came to the fore of American illustration by means of the prominent cover art they painted for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and for classic books like those published by Scribner’s. Although readers became familiar with the artists’ art as smaller-scale printed covers, the covers all began as paintings like those on view in this exhibition.
The consummate storybook illustrator, Wyeth paints covers that are inspired by their source material — the words and characters imagined by an author — and his paintings thus tend to capture moments that appear plucked from a larger narrative. Note, too, how Wyeth, in contrast to Rockwell, frequently does not leave blank space in a composition for book titles and author names to be added later on; sometimes, as with the covers for Anthony Adverse and The White Company, Wyeth was instead commissioned by publishers to paint the copy directly into his painting.
Rockwell, meanwhile, is the 20th century’s cover- illustrator-in-chief, and the paintings on display here show the variety of compositional strategies the artist uses depending on the assignment at hand. Characteristic of many of his covers for the Post (although not all), many of Rockwell’s paintings position figures against a white backdrop, which emphasizes their specific features and actions and frees up space for additional copy, like the magazine title and teasers for the features within. Other Rockwell covers — for the Post and magazines like Life and This Week — appear as completely finished paintings, with full scenic backdrops. In contrast to Wyeth’s more narrative-inspired cover art, Rockwell’s covers are less illustrative of a moment in a story than of a moment in time in America, visual anecdotes of moods, behaviors, and pastimes that he (and publishers) knew would enthrall readers.
N. C. Wyeth
Anthony Adverse, 1934
Tempera on panel
Slipcase cover for Anthony Adverse, by Hervey Allen, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York, 1934
Anthony Adverse was a widely popular adventure novel that spans the entire life of its main character. Born the illegitimate son of a noble Scottish woman and her lover, Anthony is left to be raised in a convent. He falls in love with a cook’s daughter, Angela Giuseppe, but their relationship is continually threatened by outside characters and circumstances.
For the cover of the book, Wyeth chooses to illustrate Anthony in a loving embrace with Angela, desperate not to let anything come between them. Wyeth uses his own son, the famed American painter Andrew Wyeth, for Anthony and his youngest daughter, Ann Wyeth McCoy, to pose as his love. The two characters are surrounded by a decorative frame with flowers and cherubs, further emphasizing the love and bond between the two characters. The book was so popular that it was made into a film just two years later. Starring Frederic March and Olivia de Havilland, the film version of the epic historical drama won four Academy Awards in 1936.
Norman Rockwell
Petticoats and Pants - Man Wearing Kilt, Woman Wearing Suit, 1918
Oil on canvas
Judge Magazine, June 1, 1918 cover
Between 1917 and 1919, Judge, a popular humor magazine, published six Rockwell covers, including Petticoats and Pants. This painting was completed at the very cusp of Rockwell’s burgeoning career and was published a month after Germany failed to halt U.S. troops from crossing the Atlantic in the midst of World War I. The painting is a charming example of two distinctive fashion statements, upturning expectations of how opposite sexes prototypically dress at a time when fashion was not as fluid as it is today. However, those differing fashion trends calmly blended on the cover of Judge magazine and emerged as a witty and unique Rockwellian juxtaposition. Many of Rockwell’s later images featured similar comparisons of incongruous ideas, which when conjoined, harmonized to create ironic and comedic views of the world.
Norman Rockwell
Till The Boys Come Home, 1918
Oil on canvas
Life Magazine, August 15, 1918, cover
Rockwell often chose to illustrate people who were overlooked by society. During a time when most illustrators were focusing on soldiers fighting in World War I, Rockwell instead paid tribute to the women who remained on the home front. Here he depicts four forlorn young women trying to distract themselves with knitting and contemplation, while it is quite clear their true thoughts are only of the titular “boys” fighting overseas. In Rockwell’s painting, each detail is significant to the overall theme, such as the inclusion of a piece of censored mail from a soldier (see bottom center of the composition). It is a subtle reminder of the difficulties families and loved ones experienced in an age when much less information was available to the public than now.
Norman Rockwell
The Adventure Trail - Study, 1952
Charcoal on paper
Signed lower right and inscribed: “Greeting to my good friend Lex Lucas cordially, Norman Rockwell”
Boy Scouts of America calendar, 1952, and Boys’ Life, February 1952 cover
Rockwell’s illustrations for the Boy Scouts of America are among his most beloved works. These powerful depictions provided indelible imagery to express the core values of Scouting, which remain equally as important today. In The Adventure Trail, a Boy Scout explains the arrowheads to two young Cub Scouts and their puppy, all listening attentively. Rockwell meticulously includes all the necessary badges and insignias of the Boy Scouts but still imbues his signature sense of humor by showing the dog intently learning the lesson along with the young boys.
Norman Rockwell
The Doughboy and His Admirers, 1919
Oil on canvas
The Saturday Evening Post, February 22, 1919, cover
The theme of patriotism is nearly omnipresent in Rockwell illustrations. During World War I, ineligible for active duty, Rockwell served in the United States Naval Reserve Force for a short period. In addition to producing illustrations for the Navy, Rockwell’s support for the war efforts is evident in each of his magazine covers showing American servicemen. In The Doughboy and His Admirers, children are proudly surrounding and celebrating a war hero’s return home. It reflects the joy and happiness felt by the entire country at the end of WWI.
N. C. Wyeth
Frontier Trapper, 1920
Oil on canvas
The Treasure Chest, by Olive Miller, My Book House: Chicago, IL, 1920, cover piece
The only illustration in Oliver Miller’s The Treasure Chest, Frontier Trapper served as the cover image for the 1920 book. Wyeth’s use of dark, rustic colors set against the glowing white moon, painterly brushstrokes, and attention to detail exemplify his masterful craftsmanship in bringing storybook characters — like the trapper here — to life in a picturesque manner. His attention to detail can be verified by a trip to his studio today in Chadds Ford, where the same canoe, musket, and animal skin frock used as props for this painting can still be seen.
Norman Rockwell
The Fisherman, 1916
Oil on canvas
Recreation Magazine, May 1916 cover
Rockwell painted only three covers for Recreation, a magazine that appealed to an audience similar to that of Boys’ Life. Both magazines’ illustrations typically featured popular outdoor activities. This very early Rockwell cover was painted when the artist was just 22 years old. It includes the date (1916) and his middle initial “P,” for Percevel, a given name that he dropped the very next year. While the signature style of Rockwell’s later covers is noticeably absent from this work, it shows his early interest in a painterly technique, much like that of Howard Pyle (1853-1911), the popularity of whose 19th-century illustrations has earned him the title of “Father of American Illustration.”
Norman Rockwell
Which one? - study (voting booth), ca. 1944
Mixed media on paperboard
Study for The Saturday Evening Post, November 4, 1944, cover
In the wake of the 1944 election between incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey, Rockwell, along with the rest of the country, eagerly anticipated the results in the midst of World War II. To mark this time of political tension, he painted a gentleman entering the voting booth just before the curtain is drawn, debating his decision. The newspaper folded in his pocket shows a portrait of each candidate above the heading “Which One?” Ultimately, Roosevelt won his record-breaking fourth presidential election with 53.39% of the popular vote, although he would die just three months into the term, leaving the office to his Vice President, Harry S. Truman.
Norman Rockwell
Threading the Needle, 1922
Oil on canvas
The Saturday Evening Post, April 8, 1922, cover
Threading the Needle is prototypical of Rockwell’s early Saturday Evening Post covers. From the beginning of his career with the Post until the early 1940s, he frequently used a design system that focused on a single, central character surrounded by a simple white background. Covers were meant to entice newsstand buyers, and, early on, Rockwell intuitively leaned into this, developing an illustration style that could “tell a whole story with a single image.” The model for this cover, Dave Campion, offered himself as a perfect Rockwell-type with a lanky, lean physique. In fact, he was such a popular model that the artist used him repeatedly for multiple Post covers and advertisements; in many ways, so recognizable was Campion that his image became synonymous with a Rockwell painting.
Norman Rockwell
Man Inspecting Socks, 1924
Oil on masonite
Advertisement for Interwoven Socks, published in The Saturday Evening Post, August 9, 1924, p. 105
Rockwell began producing advertisements for Interwoven Socks in 1922. These ads were very successful and widely circulated in publications such as The American Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and Life. Man Inspecting Socks is a clever depiction of a traveling businessman who, because of Interwoven brand socks, need never worry about holes in his socks while on the go. Additional clients for whom Rockwell illustrated advertisements included: Edison Mazda Lamp Works, Encyclopedia Britannica, Fisk Tire, Maxwell House Coffee, Overland Cars, Parker Pens, Dixon Ticonderoga Pencils, Ford Motor Company, Listerine, Sun Maid Raisins, Post Cereals, Dutchess Trousers, and Coca-Cola.
N. C. Wyeth
Snowbound, 1928
Oil on canvas
Created for a proposed educational series on American poetry sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company
Snowbound was intended as part of a proposed set of pictures inspired by famous American poems for distribution by the Coca-Cola Company as educational material for classrooms. For Wyeth’s contribution to the project, he created Snowbound, inspired by excerpts from the poem “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll” by John Greenleaf Whittier, first published in 1866. The poem chronicles a rural New England family as a snowstorm rages outside for three days. Stuck in their home for a week, the family members exchange stories by their roaring fire:
And, when the second morning shone, / We looked upon a world unknown. / On nothing we could call our own, / Around the glittering wonder bent / The blue walls of the firmament. / No cloud above, no earth below, / a universe of sky and snow!
The father then gathers his sons — demanding “Boys, a path!” — and the battle against the waves of snow begins. Wyeth captures that moment of timeless beauty embodied in the stillness
Norman Rockwell
Young Girl with a Coke, not dated
Oil on canvas
In the 1930s, Snyder & Black, an advertising agency, commissioned Rockwell for a series of advertisements for Coca-Cola, their most important client and America’s most visible and popular brand. For such important commissions, Rockwell depicted moments of relaxation and leisure, choosing to be inspired by the message of an idealized lifestyle over a simple product placement. While Young Girl with a Coke was not published as an advertisement, it does fit Rockwell’s theme of depicting an idealized life, enjoyed with a Coke.
Norman Rockwell
Kaynee Blouses and Wash Suits Make You Look All Dressed Up, 1919
Oil on canvas
Boys’ Life advertisement, November 1919
Kaynee company blouse and wash suits advertisement pg. 49
The task of the advertising picture is still different ... it is intended to sell the product advertised. No matter how beautiful an advertising picture may be, if it does not sell the product which it advertises it is a failure.
- Norman Rockwell
Specializing in children’s wear, the Kaynee Company commissioned Rockwell to create an iconic advertisement to showcase its current line of kids’ clothing. Rockwell painted this illustration of two properly dressed, groomed, and well-mannered boys smiling at the viewer with their puppy. The image sparks the desire for a parent’s own children to have the same wide-eyed, youthful exuberance as these boys do — and suggests that Kaynee Company’s clothing will make that possible!
N. C. Wyeth
Daniel Boone, The Home Seeker - Cumberland Valley, 1936
Oil on canvas
The Home Insurance Company calendar, 1938
Also printed as Everett Webster Insurance, Peterboro, N.H. calendar
Wyeth illustrated his most beloved theme, the American West, and one of its most iconic figures, Daniel Boone, for this 1938 calendar. The calendar text that accompanied the image stated: “Daniel Boone instantly calls to mind one of the most daring and adventuresome figures of pioneer American days.” The calendar text continued to explain Boone’s significance to American History as the frontier hero whose “persuasive voice” leads to American expansion into and settlement of Kentucky, then still outside the westernmost borders of the American colonies. The text also addresses the importance of this particular scene: “This painting portrays a characteristic group of 1773, led by Boone himself. It is early summer in Cumberland Gap and beyond the distant hills lie the luxuriant and beckoning plains of Kentucky.”
Norman Rockwell
Let’s Give Him Enough and On Time - Study, 1942
Oil on canvas
Study for United State Army Poster, 1942
Rockwell achieved the highest level of detail and accuracy in his illustrations through his diligent selection of models and props, arranging those items within the proper setting, and photographing the scene before beginning his artwork. By painting from these photographs, Rockwell ensured every expression, posture, prop, and background was accurate. For this 1942 U.S. Army Poster, Rockwell had Colonel Fairfax Ayers, a retired Army officer and neighbor in Arlington, Vermont, arrange to have a gun crew and machine gun sent to his studio. Rockwell focuses on the details of this wartime scene, ripping the gunner’s shirt into tatters and including the fine intricacies of the machine gun. Empty bullet shells fall from the smoking machine gun as the soldier focuses on his target.
Norman Rockwell
Father and Son Skiing (Winter), 1961
Oil on canvas
Brown & Bigelow: Four Seasons Calendar, Winter, 1961
The purpose of a picture for a calendar differs from the purpose of a picture for a magazine cover or a story illustration ... Here you do not wish to startle but to create something which is quiet, pleasing – and enduring ... Emotional subjects, containing elements of tenderness and sympathy, are more popular than gags and humor. The color, like the subject, should be quiet and pleasing, and the characters pictured should be people you would like to know or with whom you would like to live.
-Norman Rockwell
Rockwell created numerous calendar illustrations for Brown & Bigelow, the nation’s largest and most prolific calendar printer and distributor. His Brown & Bigelow calendars usually followed the same characters through the changing seasons of a year. Rockwell painted his “Four Seasons” theme for Brown & Bigelow for 16 years, from 1948 to 1964. For this 1961 series, Rockwell chose to highlight the tender teaching moments between a father and his son. For Winter the duo is skiing, for Spring the son is learning to pray, for Summer he is learning to tie a fishing rod, and in Autumn he is learning to shoot a rifle.
Norman Rockwell
Father and Son Fishing (Summer), 1961
Oil on canvas
Brown & Bigelow Four Seasons calendar, Summer, 1961
The Harper Family Gallery
N. C. Wyeth
Prestongrange, ca. 1924
Oil on canvas
David Balfour-Being Memoirs of the Further Adventures of David Balfour at Home and Abroad, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Scribner and Sons, 1924, fp. 42
Originally published in 1893, David Balfour was written by Robert Louis Stevenson as a sequel to his very popular 1886 novel Kidnapped. Both books follow the adventures of Balfour as he pursues his inheritance and his alliance with Alan Breck Stewart in the intrigues of Jacobite troubles in Scotland. The novel was very popular upon its first publication in Young Folks Magazine, and then revitalized again when it was republished with Wyeth’s dynamic illustrations. One of the main characters in this sequel is Lord William Grant Prestongrange, for whom Balfour searches to plead his friend’s innocence in a murder trial. Wyeth painted this portrait of Prestongrange in a dark, serious manner, reflecting the character’s weighted significance in the story.
Norman Rockwell
Red Head, 1940
Oil on canvas
Red Head, by Brooke Hanlon, American Magazine, November 1940, pg. 18
‘No doubt Linda had meant to hold young Tim gingerly, fearfully, but that sort of holding was never part of young Tim’s plans ... ’
It is more difficult to make an illustration than to paint a cover, as you must customarily interpret the author’s text. Yet some of my story illustrations are the best works that I have done. In covers, the detail essential to storytelling may hurt, rather than help, the esthetic qualities; in illustration, one strives more for atmosphere, and can approach the esthetic standards of the fine artist ... Many illustrators of fiction look through a story to find the most dominant or dramatic incident, and illustrate that. I prefer to discover the atmosphere of a story — the feeling behind it — and then express this basic quality.
-Norman Rockwell
Red Head is a quintessential example of Rockwell’s ability to capture our attention by posing enough questions at the opening to motivate us to read the entire story. At the story’s beginning, Linda, the character pictured, loses her child just days after birth. This horrible incident causes her mother-in-law, Verity, to adopt an orphaned redheaded boy, referred to as “Red,” in the hope that he will help the grieving parents move on and start a new family.
Rockwell chose to illustrate the story’s pinnacle moment when Linda finally embraces Red, accepting him into her family, as soon as his adoption is threatened. The broken vase of flowers on the floor, Linda’s protective embrace of Red, and her piercing stare off-canvas create a heightened sense of drama within the composition. This moment encompasses the story’s emotional tale, drawing readers in to experience the adventure for themselves and tugging at the heartstrings of the audience, particularly the parents.
N. C. Wyeth
A Cloud of Dust Poured Over Him, 1925
Oil on canvas
Dedicated lower right to “Bill Bancroft”
Slim by James Boyd, McCall’s Magazine, January 1926, pg. 11
‘A cloud of dust poured over him, he lashed down wildly. After that there was nothing but spinning haze in which he and his saddle rocked and spun ... ‘
For Wyeth, the bucking bronco was both homage to the artistic legacy of Frederic Remington and a living symbol of the American West. It was the subject of the illustrator’s first Saturday Evening Post cover and is revisited here, 22 years later, with clarity and strength of vision.
Purity of the moment is central to this image’s success. Areas of color shared between the two heroes – man and horse – break the monochromatic landscape, further obscured by swirling dust. The red of the striped clothing worn by the cowboy, wild but in control, matches the red of the gums of the horse, wild and resisting control. This painting originally combined with a second to create a double-page illustration for “Slim,” a short story by James Boyd published in McCall’s Magazine. This canvas, the right half of the pendant illustrations, was gifted to Ms. Frances Bancroft, who as a child was nicknamed “Billy,” as the signature references. The second canvas, the left side, was entrusted to Carolyn Wyeth.
Paint Us a Story
A powerful cover illustration might help sell a book or magazine, but 20th century publishers (not unlike those today) also knew a great story could be made even better with its prose enlivened by pictures.
Newsstand buyers and magazine subscribers encountered three principal types of stories in weekly and monthly publications: standalone news features, short fiction, and serialized novels. While most non-fiction news stories were supplemented with photographs, when a publication like The Saturday Evening Post or Look boasted the Norman Rockwell as its resident illustrator, it was hard for them not to make the most of their celebrity artist. Publishers knew that Rockwell’s take on contemporary events would draw even more eyes to an individual story — especially those in which he figured himself (as in the wonderfully self-referential painting Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School that accompanied a four-page essay of the same name). Just imagine, too, how much more powerful Sargent Shriver’s 1965 article on “How Goes the War on Poverty” became with its illustration by Rockwell, a now seminal image that uses a quote from Lyndon B. Johnson and makes literal the imperative that Americans lend fellow Americans a hand.
More often, as seen in the paintings in this gallery, both Wyeth and Rockwell painted regularly for magazine fiction stories, illustrating key moments in tales ranging from thrillers to romance and everything in between. For serialized novels, whose stories played out over several issues, the artists’ illustrations added an extra enticement for readers to come back for more.
When it came to book illustration and to illustration for adventure novels specifically, Wyeth was the go-to book illustrator in the first decades of the 20th century. His elaborate paintings — like those on display here — graced the pages of books by renowned authors like Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne and visualized for readers the action and characters in settings as far-flung as the Scottish Highlands and the American Old West.
N. C. Wyeth
The Horse Fell With His Rider to the Bottom of the Cliff, ca. 1927
Oil on canvas
Michael Strogoff: A Courier of the Czar, Alexander II, by Jules Verne, Charles Scribner’s Sons, London, 1927, fp. 312
‘The horse fell with his rider to the bottom of the cliff.’
In this Scribner’s Classic book, titular character Michael Strogoff is sent as a courier of the Russian Czar on a journey to warn troops of a traitor within their ranks. He is taken prisoner by the enemy and blinded as punishment. In this illustration, Wyeth captures the terrifying moment the blinded Michael leads his horse off a cliff as the enemy chases them. The distorted position of the horse — with clouds of rubble gathering behind it and its rider — emphasizes the chaos of the moment and leaves their fate in question.
N. C. Wyeth
Mr. Cassidy... Saw a crimson rider sweep down upon him ... Heralded by a blazing .41, 1906
Oil on canvas
Bar-20 Range Yarns, Part VII--Cassidy at Cactus, by C.E. Mulford, The Outing Magazine, December 1906, pg. 337
A new type of Western hero — whose emergence heralded a new literary genre —appeared shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Hopalong Cassidy and his comrades first appeared in a series of stories in Outing Magazine beginning in 1905, with illustrations by Wyeth and Frank E. Schoonover. In these early stories, the cowhands portrayed by the author and artists are not the more refined cowboy heroes they become in their later incarnations. Here, their outfits are noticeably tattered, the evidence of various gunfights, and they are represented as quick to anger, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking working men. The stories’ creator, C.E. Mulford, was a stickler for detail. He was a careful researcher and sought authenticity both in terms of the dialogue and descriptions of cowboy life. Equally attentive to detail and verisimilitude were his early illustrators Wyeth and Schoonover, both of whom had studied under Howard Pyle, the “father of American illustration,” who insisted that period costumes be accurately rendered.
Mulford’s stories were very popular, evoking a vanished frontier world for a new generation of Americans who increasingly worked in offices and lived in cities. Indeed, a widespread concern at the time was the apparent loss of heroic, vigorous “masculinity” in the average American man, now a besuited office drone toiling away in any number of generic, fast-rising tall buildings across the country. While principally a creative response to the closing of the American frontier, the fictional reconstruction of the old West through stories like those of Hopalong Cassidy also thus served as wistful reminders of “traditional” rough-hewn masculinity of the not-too-distant past.
N. C. Wyeth
Barefooted Brooks Clark, Building Wall, 1936
Oil on wood panel
Verso-label: “WEBER RENAISSANCE PANEL, This panel upon which this painting is executed has been prepared for the exclusive use of: N.C. Wyeth Esq...., No. 439, Date Prepared: 5.18.36”
Men of Concord: And Some Others as Portrayed in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau, Edited by Francis H. Allen, 1936 by Henry D. Thoreau, Bonanza Books, Crown Publishers, Inc., NY, ‘Barefooted Brooks Clark, Building Wall’ PLATE IX, pg. 190
While still in his twenties, Wyeth first encountered the writings of naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau, a leading voice in the mid-19th century flowering of American literature. Thoreau’s pursuit of an ideal relationship between humankind and nature impressed Wyeth deeply, so much so that Wyeth considered Thoreau to be “the springhead for almost every move I can make.” Wyeth’s most complete artistic expression of this admiration is reflected in a series of twelve large paintings that he executed as illustrations for the book Men of Concord, a compilation of extracts from Thoreau’s Journal published in 1936. The book was conceived by Wyeth as a way to help the public appreciate Thoreau as a great American philosopher.
Among the series of paintings that Wyeth created for Men of Concord is Barefooted Brooks Clark Building a Wall. In his journal, Thoreau writes of encountering 80-year old Brooks Clark walking down the road barefooted one day. Returning from an apple-picking excursion, the old man was “enjoying the evening of his days,” and his cheeriness “proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy, as infancy.” Thoreau was even more impressed when he saw the octogenarian building a stone wall on a later occasion — this is the moment in the story that Wyeth chooses to depict.
Wyeth’s lifelong veneration for our nation’s historical traditions grew out of his New England heritage and was strengthened by his Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania residency in the history-rich Brandywine Valley, manifesting itself in idealized, heroic images of such larger-than-life American personalities as Brooks Clark.
N. C. Wyeth
Svenson and the Maiden, 1909
Oil on canvas
Svenson, by Michael Williams and Kenneth MacNichol, Redbook Magazine, Vol. XIII, No. 6, October 1909
‘Under Svenson’s charge the spell of the desert took hold.’
Michael Williams and Kenneth MacNichols’ serialized story “Svenson” ran in Redbook Magazine and tells the tale of a young Navajo man named Svenson who studies in an American school for six years and then finds himself torn between two worlds, neither of which accepts him fully. Using painterly brushstrokes, Wyeth illustrates this quiet scene of “Svenson and the Maiden.” The moment of pause in the characters’ journey can be felt as we follow their gaze off canvas. While renowned for his illustrations of high action, Wyeth was also able to grasp the gentle moments of calm within a story.
N. C. Wyeth
He Never Caught a Thing and Ruined Jon’s Reputation as a Fisherman (Along the Brandywine), 1913
Oil on canvas
War, or What Happens When One Loves One’s Enemy, by John Luther Long, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1913, frontispiece.
‘He never caught a thing and he ruined Jon’s reputation as a fisherman.’
As a student of the “Father of American Illustration” Howard Pyle, Wyeth adhered closely to his mentor’s teachings that students should take inspiration from their surroundings. For Wyeth, living up to this credo meant frequently painting scenes around his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He Never Caught a Thing most likely depicts a scene in his own backyard with his own children as the models. This artwork also highlights Wyeth’s influences from European impressionist painters in both the looseness of the painting technique and the sense of its having been painted en plein air (in the open air).
N. C. Wyeth
A Song of the South, 1925
Oil on canvas
A Son of His Father, by Harold Bell Wright, McCall’s Magazine, May 1925, illus. 15
‘The sweet strains of music ... stole into the consciousness of the tired girl.’
Wyeth had an extraordinary ability to bring to life — and vivid reality — characters and settings from an author’s imaginary story, and many of Wyeth’s illustrations, like A Song of the South, take the still-relatively-new “frontier” of the American West as their theme. Indeed, because the uniqueness of the American Western landscape and its characters were still widely unknown to (and unseen by) most of the United States, Wyeth’s illustrations like these held great power: they cemented a vision of the American West in young readers’ minds’ eyes for generations.
First appearing in McCall’s Magazine as a serialized adventure novel with illustrations by Wyeth, Harold Bell Wright’s A Son of His Father is set in mountains and deserts of southern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border. Illustrating a quiet moment in Wright’s story, Wyeth’s A Song of the South transports the reader — and us — to an Arizona ranch, replete with recognizably Southwestern textile, ceramic, and native flora, combined with the gentle music of a guitar.
N. C. Wyeth
The Doryman, 1933
Oil on canvas
Trending into Maine, by Kenneth Roberts, Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1938, fp. 348 and dust jacket in the 1944 printing
The Doryman, painted for Kenneth Robert’s novel Trending into Maine, is one example of Wyeth’s integrating his passion for landscape painting into his illustrations. Painted near Wyeth’s summer home in Port Clyde, Maine, the artist’s love for the outdoors and landscape of New England is sensed clearly in his gentle treatment of this quiet, simple moment of a fisherman upon the still waters of the harbor. Look, too, how carefully Wyeth depicts the reflections of the fisherman, his dory (the boat from which he fishes), and the seagull flying beside, whose own flapping mirrors the rowing motions of the titular doryman.
N. C. Wyeth
Thorgunna, The Waif Woman, 1914
Oil on canvas
The Waif Woman, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Scribner’s Magazine, December 1914 Vol. LVI, no.6, frontispiece
In the second half of the 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson created many very successful novels that were translated and spread throughout the world, including most famously Treasure Island. After the turn of the century, many of these adventure tales and grand novels were reprinted with equally successful illustrations, often painted by Wyeth. These illustrations brought a new life — and visual reality — to Stevenson’s writings, creating a new audience twenty years after the author’s death.
In mid-September of 1914, Wyeth wrote of this painting, representing the eponymous Waif Woman: “I feel that I have scored a little triumph at Scribner’s with the Stevenson pictures. The story was a rush story – that is I was given little time to accomplish the work and thus they planned to reproduce it in black and white. My first picture, Thorgunna, took them by storm and they decided to force the engravers to turn out color plates and make it the frontispiece for the Xmas number ... It’s undoubtedly the best work I’ve ever done and I’m glad they are recognizing it.”
Norman Rockwell
The Silhouette, 1931
Oil on canvas
Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1931, p. 14
Rockwell’s illustrations for Ladies’ Home Journal were often fully developed and well detailed, in contrast to the compositions of his early Saturday Evening Post covers, in which he usually set figures against a stark white background. His subjects for the Journal ranged from the colonial era to the present day. The Silhouette illustrates a young colonial woman having her silhouette cut by an artist during the Revolutionary War period. Instead of painting just the figures — as one might see on a Post cover —Rockwell creates a complete environment and specific setting for the couple, which places them at a certain time in history. The painting is filled with Revolutionary War-era details such as period clothing, a musket in the corner, and a clock, as well as the period furniture and architecture around them. All props selected by the artist reinforce the message of his visual story.
N. C. Wyeth
Wallace and the Children, 1921
Oil on canvas
The Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter, Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1921, fp. 264
Originally published in 1809, Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs tells the story of William Wallace and the brave Scots who rebelled against the tyranny of King Edward during the period of 1296 to 1305. Wyeth’s brilliant illustrations brought this story to life in Scribner’s 1921 republishing of the story with brilliant colors and beautiful compositions.
Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School, 1946
Oil paint on two pieces of photographic paper
“Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School,” The Saturday Evening Post, November 2, 1946, pg. 24-25
Rockwell’s heartfelt depiction of a country schoolhouse shows the tenderness teachers take in educating their students. Clearly a beloved teacher, the students gather around her while she reads to them, each student anticipating her every word, with the exception of one girl simply lost in her own story. Rockwell even includes his own charming versions of the children’s drawings hung on the walls.
(Center Wall)
Rockwell and The Four Freedoms
In 1942, Rockwell painted four works that have become among his most iconic — and his most collected. Entitled The Four Freedoms and intended to be sold as patriotic posters (if and when the government agreed to sell them), the paintings appeared initially as full-page reproductions in The Saturday Evening Post, with one presented each week over the course of a month and each accompanied by an essay. The first painting to appear was Freedom of Speech in the February 20, 1942 issue. Almost immediately, the Post was overwhelmed with requests for reprints (more than 25,000), effectively transforming four magazine illustrations into must-have collectible objects of American culture.
Rockwell originally pitched the idea — to create four paintings that would underline the core democratic values of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear — to the U.S. Ordnance Department in Washington, D.C., for whom he had previously completed a commission. However, with the country deeper in war, the government did not have the funds to expend toward the proposal at that time. On Rockwell’s way home from Washington, though, he stopped in Philadelphia to present the idea to Post editor Ben Hibbs, who immediately recognized the importance of the four artworks. Inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s January 6, 1941 speech, the paintings became a huge success in the States as well as abroad. The images affirmed the values and beliefs which signified “Norman Rockwell’s America,” and their popularity in the Post convinced the government to sell them as posters after all, with 2.5 million posters produced and sold.
The posters — four original, first-run versions of which are on display here — became part of the war campaign, and the original paintings toured across the country, exhibited in sixteen cities to raise money for the war bond effort.
Rockwell & Wyeth: Then and Now
The generations-long — and lasting — appeal of Rockwell and Wyeth’s illustrations underlines that the two artists continue to strike a chord with art lovers (and art lovers who may not realize they are art lovers) worldwide. For more than 100 years now, since Wyeth’s earliest book illustrations brought readers’ favorite fictional heroes to life, American audiences, in particular, have entertained a certain taste for the brand of idyllic Americana the artists made the centerpiece of their work. And today, the paintings on display in this exhibition read in many ways to many viewers as simultaneously nostalgic and timeless, indicative of a seemingly simpler era that still looks iconically “American.”
But where do our genuine memories — and understandings — of America’s past end and where do Rockwell and Wyeth’s images or evocations of that past begin? It can be hard to separate, so ubiquitous were their illustrations in early and mid-20th century America. Indeed, while Rockwell and Wyeth helped define the visual culture we associate popularly with America at its most “American,” their paintings did not match the lived realities of most Americans living in those decades.
Closely tied to fictional stories and often situated explicitly in a faded, legendary past like that of the Old West, Wyeth’s illustrations are more easily embraced as fantasy. Meanwhile, for all their wit, charm, and social commentary, the majority of Rockwell’s illustrations — especially those for the Post — feature a traditional and mostly white, middle-class American version of the past (itself an idealization). Minorities are thus notably underrepresented and rarely featured as protagonists, as Rockwell was commissioned by publishers and companies who saw their primary customer base as white consumers — and catered their products accordingly and with minimal hint of the struggles or persecution many Americans faced in their lives. However, Rockwell does address American hardships in his paintings — from war and poverty to the Civil Rights movement — and places social activism and race relations front and center in his work after 1963 when he joins Look magazine.
As much as we might wish then that these are representations of America as it once was, we must also remember that the versions of America we see here are — and always have been — imagined ones. And Rockwell and Wyeth were painters whose acclaim is built on just that: unapologetically digestible work that is now understood less as comprehensively American than as American lore — and they and their work as true icons of Americana.
Norman Rockwell
How Goes the War on Poverty, 1965
Oil on canvas
How Goes the War on Poverty, by Sargent Shriver, Look Magazine, July 27, 1965, pgs. 30-31
‘The poor are cynical. They have been exploited, and they know it. They are wary of new programs.’
As part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society campaign to improve the living standards and general welfare of all Americans, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964 to assist those living in poverty. A year after the program’s inauguration, Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, wrote an article for Look magazine outlining how the Act’s programs were being received and how they would progress in the future: “The poor are cynical. They have been exploited, and they know it. They are wary of new programs.”
Rockwell succinctly summarizes Shriver’s message of uniting the nation to improve its total welfare system through the visual use of two powerful hands, each clenching the other and set against a cold blue background of diverse faces. Each face expresses a different emotion to the viewer, as if asking what the viewer can do to help the cause. While the full canvas shows many hands reaching up from the bottom to grasp the hands of opportunity, Look decided to crop the image just below the two hands, accentuating the central, strong concept of joining together.
Perkins Gallery
American Issues: Rockwell & The Saturday Evening Post
Rockwell began working for The Saturday Evening Post in 1916, and his earliest covers focused primarily on children, a theme that targeted broad relatability. His first Post cover commission — kicking off a run of 321 covers between 1916 and 1963 — is called The Baby Carriage and appeared on newsstands and in subscribers’ homes across the country on May 20, 1916. A perfect kickoff to the characteristically humorous scenes of childhood and family anecdotal drama that would become Rockwell’s signature, in this first cover Rockwell’s favorite young model, Billy Paine, poses as the grumpy (but diligent) big brother whose baby carriage duties prevent him from playing baseball with his friends. Although Billy, the real- life model, died in a tragic accident at 13, he appears in 15 Post covers; Rockwell later recalled that Billy was “the best kid model I ever used.”
The Baby Carriage initiated an astonishing career trajectory for Rockwell, who was a mere 22 years old at the time of this first Post cover commission. 320 more covers followed, with light-hearted subjects like children getting into mischief counterbalanced by illustrations that retain Rockwellian uplift but nevertheless reflect realities of America at war and hint not so subtly at economic and racial inequalities. In 1963, Rockwell painted his last Post cover, entitled “Portrait of John F. Kennedy” and published on December 14, 1963, a fittingly elegiac coda to a presidency cut short and to Rockwell’s own relationship with the Post.
In this immense, chronological installation of all 321 Post covers created by Rockwell, we can glean the breadth of the artist’s achievements over nearly five decades with the magazine, carrying us — like his fans back then — through America’s ostensible highs (the “Roaring Twenties,” the “Fabulous Fifties”) and lows (the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars). As you follow along and track the covers over the years, keep in mind that every illustration is inherently an artifact of its moment in time, offering a lens upon its era, no matter how explicitly or implicitly or imperfectly it addresses history or every American’s reality. Recall, too, that each cover began as a full-scale painting, as seen throughout the first two galleries of this exhibition, and showcases that Rockwell was as prodigious as he was talented — earning him worldwide admiration that continues to this day.