ROCKWELL: ILLUSTRATOR AND ARTIST

Soldier on Leave

ROCKWELL: ILLUSTRATOR AND ARTIST

by Joan K. Yanni

During his lifetime Norman Rockwell was one of the best known and most loved artists in America. He produced 317 covers for the Saturday Evening Post as well as illustrations for Look, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Literary Digest and other prominent magazines of the day. He was known for his Boy Scout calendars and illustrations for classics such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  His work could be seen in ads for light bulbs, soft drinks, toothpaste, and encyclopedias. He pictured the life of the average American as well as major events in American history from Admiral Dewey’s warships arriving in New York Harbor to Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic to man’s first steps on the moon. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson sat for portraits, and he painted world figures such as Nasser of Egypt and Nehru of India. His work was published without interruption for over seventy years.

Rockwell (1894-1978) was born in New York City .A tall, skinny kid with a long neck and glasses, he said he turned to drawing because it was the only thing he could do well. When he failed at baseball or could not wiggle his ears, he began to draw and made it his life. He left high school to attend classes at the National Academy of Design and later studied at the Art Students League. Success came early. He became art director of Boy’s Life at 19, and drew his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post when he was 22.

With the development of four-color printing, magazines were beginning to attract the public. Since there was competition among the publications, a colorful cover sold the magazine. Each cover had to appeal to people in all corners of America: librarians and laborers, country-folk as well as cosmopolitans. Rockwell’s covers attracted everyone. He hid any personal opinions that his readers might not share, and kept his subjects light, wholesome, humorous. His covers avoided Prohibition, the Depression, Korea and Vietnam. Only later in his career did he touch on racial segregation and the death of a president.

Whatever his subject, his scenes were executed with minute details, so realistic that they resembled photographs. He achieved this realism through painstaking planning. Every situation was worked out to give proper sense of space, light and color and to focus attention on what was important to the picture. First he would make a small sketch--often only 2”x3”. Then he would gather models, usually using neighbors or friends. Often he would act out the scene, taking the parts of all the characters and demonstrating the expression he wanted on his models’ faces. So concerned with authenticity was he that he even used live animals.  His directions on how to pose a chicken are hilarious. (“A chicken will sit still for five minutes after you set it down.” The artist must move fast!)  When techniques in photography advanced, he sometimes   hired a professional photographer to take the picture he wanted, under his direction. He was always in charge.Then the actual painting began. As he painted, he separated each layer of paint from the next by a layer of varnish.Though this did not guarantee survival of the painting, it provided the finish that he wanted. He was concerned with reproducing his work, not preserving it. Many of his original paintings deteriorated quickly, with bits of paint peeling off or evidence of yellowing caused by the varnish between the paint layers

As his personal contribution during World War II, Rockwell painted the famous “Four Freedoms” posters, symbolizing for millions of Americans the aims described by President Franklin Roosevelt and in 1941 incorporated into the Atlantic Charter: “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of Religion,” “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom from Fear.” The familiar posters were used to promote the sale of war bonds.

In 1941, just after the “Four Freedoms” had been issued, Rockwell’s studio burned. It resulted in the loss of 28 years of props and an unrecorded number of original paintings and files of clippings. Because there were no records, the extent of the loss will never be known.

In 1957 the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington cited him as a Great Living American, saying that “Through the magic of your talent, the folks next door--their gentle sorrows, their modest joys--have enriched our own lives and given us new insight into our countrymen.” When he died at Stockbridge, MA, at 84, there was an unfinished painting on his easel. The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge holds a large collection of his paintings and has preserved his last studio as well.

MAG’s Soldier on Leave (74.98), was the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on August 12, 1944, in the midst of World War II. The scene it pictures was an all-too common one: Allied forces had landed in Normandy on June 6, D-Day, two months prior to the publication date, and young men were subject to the draft. Wartime romances were made more urgent by the threat of separation, and lack of privacy was unimportant when time together might be brief. The scene is a train, where seatbacks could be moved to face front or back, depending on the direction of the train or the space desired. A young couple is clinging together, ignoring the young girl peering at them over the back of her seat. The details are impeccable: the girl’s curious look, the woman’s black and white shoes, the soldier’s uniform and each strand of hair. The people in the painting are no doubt Rockwell’s Vermont neighbors, and they are posed in an actual train loaned to him by the Rutland Railroad.

Our painting was a gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert M. Boynton; Dr. Boynton’s father had received it from the artist. It had been in storage because of condition problems until the Rockwell Museum asked to borrow it for an exhibit. The Rockwell helped pay for its conservation, and after the exhibit closed, it was installed in the 20^th-century gallery.

Source: Buechner, Thomas, Norman Rockwell, Artist and Illustrator, Harry Abrams 1970; Encarta Encyclopedia