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First Illustrations
Rockwell's first major breakthrough came in book
illustration in 1912, at the age of 18 when he illustrated his first
book Tell Me Why: Stories about Mother Nature, by the author Carl
H Claudy. In 1913, Rockwell became the Art Editor for Boy's Life,
a magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America. He painted and illustrated
several front covers. At the age of 22 he sold his first front-cover illustration
to the Saturday Evening Post. He would go on to create another 320 over
the next forty years. This early success with the Post, triggered commissions
from other magazines, including Life, Judge and Leslie's.
During the First World War Rockwell enlisted in the army and served as
a war artist. After the War, he began creating advertising illustrations,
including those for Orange Crush Soft Drinks, Willys Cars
and Jell-O. In 1920 Rockwell created the images for the Boys Scout
Calendar, which proved so popular he produced it every year, for the next
fifty years.
Financial Success
By the early 1930s Rockwell was financially secure and, with his second
wife, moved to a large farm in Arlington, Vermont. Here, his genre-painting
began to reflect small time town life (in the style of regionalism),
with images of local friendly policemen, doctors and dentists. In 1941
the Milwaukee Art Institute awarded Rockwell his first major solo exhibition.
The same year, President Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech to Congress
called the Four Essential Human Freedoms. Rockwell created four
paintings to commemorate those freedoms entitled: Freedom of Speech,
Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from
Fear. The paintings were published in the Saturday Post in 1943 and
were hugely popular. The Federal Government took the original art works
on tour, and used them as a marketing tool to push War Bonds. According
to Ben Hibbs, Rockwell's biographer: 'They were viewed by 1,222,000 people
in 16 leading cities and were instrumental in selling $132,992,539 worth
of bonds'. Rockwell also produced images for special postage stamps, poster
art during World War II - see also History
of Poster Art, greeting cards, mail-order catalogues and Hollywood
movie posters. During the late 1940s Rockwell spent several months as
an Artist-in-Residence at the Otis College of Art and Design.
1960s
In 1959 Rockwell's second wife died unexpectantly, and with the help of
his son Thomas Rockwell, they wrote his autobiography - My Adventures
as an Illustrator (published 1960), as a commemoration. The book contained
one of Rockwell's most famous images: Triple Self-Portrait (The
Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, Massachusetts). The viewer is presented
with a painting of Rockwell (portrait 1), as he looks in a mirror (portrait
2) for drawing guidance, while drawing his portrait (3) on canvas. In
1961 Rockwell remarried for a third time, a retired school teacher. The
same year, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University
of Massachusetts. Rockwell's relationship with the Saturday Evening Post
finished in 1963, after a management decision to go for a new look and
format. He continued however to illustrate for Look Magazine for another
ten years.
Portraiture and Popular Culture
Rockwell also excelled at portrait
art. During his long artistic career, he painted portraits of many
famous public figures including JFK, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard Nixon,
President Eisenhower and Judy Garland. In 1969 he was granted a solo exhibition
in New York, which was extremely popular with the public, but received
nasty remarks from critics. They dismissed Rockwell's realist art as overly
sweet and sentimental, and said he should not be considered a serious
painter. In fact, some critics preferred to categorise him as an illustrator
rather than an artist. Nevertheless, the public loved his work and his
paintings fetched an average price of $20,000. Rockwell's client list
was also extensive and included companies like Coca Cola, Ford,
Hallmark, Heritage Press, Good Housekeeping, Literary
Digest, Maxwell House, Encyclopedia Britannica and Parker
Pens. In 1977 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's
highest civilian honour.
Legacy
Rockwell died in 1978, at the age of 84. One of the great realist
artists of his day, and one of the most popular 20th
century painters in America, his reputation continues to grow, and
his illustrations continue to be re-printed in poster, calendar and magazine
format. In 1999, a retrospective of his graphic
art and paintings was held at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. In
1993, the Rockwell Museum was opened near Stockbridge, and the
curator carried out the first catalogue of the artist's works. It amounted
to over 4,000 original drawings, paintings and illustrations. Posthumously
defying his critics, Rockwell's works were exhibited at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum in 2001; and his painting Breaking Home Ties
sold for $15.4m at a Sotheby's auction in 2006. The New York art critic
Peter Schjeldahl commented: 'Rockwell is terrific. It's become too tedious
to pretend he isn't'. In 2000 the New York Times stated Rockwell was 'the
greatest artist of the last century'.
Paintings and drawings by Norman Rockwell
can be seen in some of the best art museums
in America.
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