Norman Rockwell

Norman Percevel Rockwell (3 February 1894 – 8 November 1978) was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades.

My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller.

I'll never have enough time to paint all the pictures I'd like to.

Quotes

Santa and Expense Book appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post published December 4, 1920.

Gramps at the Plate was the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, published 5-Aug-1916.

• The View of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and the ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be. (Somebody once said that I paint the kind of girls your mother would want you to marry.)
  • Norman Rockwell, My Adventures As An Illustrator : An Autobiography (1979), p 24

• Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller.
  • As quoted in Fodor's New England (2008) by Debbie Harmsen, p. 194

• I'll never have enough time to paint all the pictures I'd like to.
  • As quoted in A Rockwell Portrait : An Intimate Biography‎ (1978) by Donald Walton, p. 61

• Gary LaCoste had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor's. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out.
  • As quoted in A Rockwell Portrait : An Intimate Biography‎ (1978) by Donald Walton, p. 198

• The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.
  • As quoted in A Rockwell Portrait : An Intimate Biography‎ (1978) by Donald Walton, p. 251

External links

• Norman Rockwell Museum, Vermont
• Norman Rockwell official web site
• Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post Covers
• Complete List of Norman Rockwell Magazine Covers with Images
• Norman Rockwell WWII posters
• Norman Rockwell at Find a Grave
• Biographical resources dedicated to Norman Rockwell
• "Portrait of the artist as a dirty old man" by Christopher Shea in Boston Globe (1 October 2006)