|
"I showed the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed." Norman Rockwell Norman Rockwell was perhaps the most well-known artist in the last century. He was a painter who was as much at ease painting kings, presidents and movie stars as he was at painting freckled-faced boys, pigtailed girls, kindly old folks, and loveable dogs. Using oils and a realistic technique, his paintings idealized small-town America. He was an illustrator for major American magazines, such as Collier's , Life , Look , and most notably, The Saturday Evening Post. His covers for the latter magazine made him famous, giving him an audience larger than that of any other artist in history, prior to the internet.  Born in New York City in 1894, he studied at the Chase School of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League.
He produced calendars, advertisements, and in addition to his work for magazines, illustrated such classics as Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.He made his home in Arlington, Vermont, where can be found many of the settings used in his illustrations, as well as some of the local people who were his models. A Norman Rockwell Museum is located in the center of the village. Rockwell's career spanned almost 60 years. The lean, pipe smoking illustrator worked seven days a week to produce canvas images of the nation he loved. As his personal contribution during World War II, Rockwell painted the famous "Four Freedoms" posters, symbolizing for millions the war aims as described by President Franklin Roosevelt. One of those posters, 'The Freedom from Want', is reproduced here, along with a variety of his other well-known works. Click on a picture below to enlarge it. Click on the enlarged version to make it small again.
|
