Norman Rockwell - 1894-1978
Born in New York City in 1894, Norman Rockwell dropped out of high school to study art at the National Academy of Design and, later, the Art Students League in New York. He first worked as an illustrator for St. Nicholas magazine and other periodicals aimed at the youth market, but in 1916 sold a painting to the Saturday Evening Post that was used on their cover. This
...see more »launched a career in which he painted over 300 covers for the Post alone. Many world-famous people sat for their portraits by him, including Egypt's Nassar, India's Nehru and U.S. Presidents Eisenhower.
Norman Rockwell's technique was to show 'slice of life', every day scenes and events with wry humor and in great detail. Many of his paintings are almost photographic in their realism, and his gentle sense of humor has never been matched by any other painter of Americana. His nostalgic scenes of country vignettes and middle-class, small town American life are treasured today as mementos of a gentler era. The Saturday Evening Post magazine was a very popular and widely-circulated publication, which gave Rockwell an extremely large audience for his art for over 40 years.
Rockwell also painted story illustrations, promotional advertising pieces, book illustrations and calendars. He painted a very special series of posters during World War II, the famous "Four Freedoms" and one version of the "Freedom of Speech" painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1957 the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington cited him as a Great Living American and President Ford awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1977, the nation's highest peacetime award. The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts displays many of his paintings and also has preserved his last studio for admirers.« see less
