American · American illustration · Realism
Norman Rockwell
b. 3 February 1894, New York City — d. 8 November 1978, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) was the American illustrator and painter whose 323 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, and his Four Freedoms of 1943, defined a warm, humorous image of everyday American life.
2 works in the collection
Works by Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator, born in New York City in 1894, whose magazine covers made him the best-known artist in the United States for half a century. Over 47 years he painted 323 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, mostly small comic dramas of family life, and in 1943 his Four Freedoms series gave the Second World War its most familiar domestic images.
Life in brief
Rockwell left high school to study at the Chase Art School, the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, and was art director of the Boy Scouts' magazine Boys' Life while still a teenager. His first Post cover appeared in 1916. He lived for many years in New Rochelle, New York, then in Arlington, Vermont, and from 1953 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 1963 he left the Post for Look magazine, where he painted civil-rights subjects such as The Problem We All Live With (1964), showing six-year-old Ruby Bridges escorted to school by federal marshals. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and died in Stockbridge the following year.
Style and method
Rockwell's pictures are storytelling paintings in the tradition of Victorian genre art: every gesture, prop and expression is chosen so the joke or the sentiment reads at a glance. From the late 1930s he worked from carefully staged photographs of his neighbors, then painted in oil at full size, with an exactness that critics long dismissed as illustration and that is now widely admired.
Key works
Freedom from Want, painted in 1942 and published in the Post in March 1943, is the third of the Four Freedoms, inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address. A grandmother sets a huge roast turkey before a smiling family; it became the definitive American Thanksgiving image, and was also parodied for its abundance in wartime. Home for Thanksgiving, a Post cover of November 1945, shows a young soldier back from the war peeling potatoes in the kitchen beside his mother. Compare Jennie Augusta Brownscombe's The First Thanksgiving.
Where to see his work
The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, holds the largest collection of his original art, including the Four Freedoms.
Questions & answers
What is Norman Rockwell famous for?
Norman Rockwell is famous for 323 covers for The Saturday Evening Post showing everyday American life, and for the Four Freedoms paintings of 1943, including Freedom from Want, the classic Thanksgiving dinner scene.
Where is Freedom from Want?
Freedom from Want and the rest of the Four Freedoms series are at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which holds the largest collection of Rockwell's original paintings.
What is Rockwell's Home for Thanksgiving?
Home for Thanksgiving was a Saturday Evening Post cover of November 1945, showing a young soldier just home from the Second World War peeling potatoes in the kitchen with his mother.