Norman Rockwell: The Complete Story
Norman Rockwell was the American painter who put the country's own face on its magazine covers for nearly half a century. His warm, funny, perfectly staged scenes of small town life ran on the Saturday Evening Post, and for millions they simply were America.
Late in life he traded the cosy world for hard subjects like civil rights, and proved he had been a sharp observer all along.
Long dismissed as a mere illustrator, he now hangs in major museums and sells for tens of millions.
Born: New York City, 1894
Known for: Saturday Evening Post covers, the Four Freedoms, small town America
Died: Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1978
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The cover that became a mirror
For 47 years Rockwell painted covers for the Saturday Evening Post, 321 of them. A boy at the doctor, a family road trip, a first prom.
He staged every scene like a film director, hiring neighbours as models and photographing them in dozens of poses before he painted.
The result looked effortless and true. It was actually built detail by detail, with the patience of a watchmaker.
More than nostalgia
Critics filed him under illustration, not art, and for decades that stuck. The charge was that he sold a sweetened America that never existed.
Look closer and the warmth carries real observation: a runaway boy and the kind cop beside him, the awkward dignity of ordinary people. Rockwell was never naive. He chose hope on purpose.
When he dropped the smile
In 1943, during the war, he painted the Four Freedoms, four images of free speech, worship, want and fear, that toured the country and helped raise millions in war bonds.
In 1964 he left the Post for Look magazine and painted The Problem We All Live With: six year old Ruby Bridges walking to a desegregated school past a wall stained by a thrown tomato and a racial slur. The cosy painter had become a witness.
What people ask about Norman Rockwell
What is Norman Rockwell famous for?
His Saturday Evening Post covers and the Four Freedoms, the warm public face of mid century America.
Was he just an illustrator?
That was the old verdict. Museums and collectors have since reclaimed him as a major American painter.
Where can you see his work?
The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts holds the largest collection.
When did he die?
In 1978, aged 84, in Stockbridge.
Are his collector plates worth anything?
Usually not much. See Are Norman Rockwell Plates Worth Anything?
Why the critics came around
The reappraisal has a price tag. His painting Saying Grace, a Thanksgiving scene of a grandmother and boy praying in a crowded diner, sold for 46 million dollars in 2013, a record that ended the illustrator versus artist debate in one stroke.
One last thing. A 1943 studio fire destroyed years of his work, costumes and props, and he simply rebuilt and kept going. The man who painted American optimism actually lived it.