Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Perceval Rockwellwas a 20th-century American author, 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. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He also is...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth3 February 1894
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I've always loved Dickens. And Henry James. Tolstoy, Dostoevski.
I'd be painting sometimes, and get the strangest feeling I was being watched. I'd look up and see faces pressed against the window or door screens. Then, when I noticed them, the people would want to come in and talk to me. Got very upset, too, when I was too busy. One time I remember a man drove his car clear across our lawn and parked it right in the middle of the grass. It was wild.
We got a good look at the Himalayas, which they tell me are about 28,000 feet high. I expected to be very impressed, but really, they didn't look any more picturesque to me than the Berkshires or the Green Mountains. Certainly not as pleasant-looking as the wooded mountains we have in New England. I'll leave those cold and barren slopes in Asia to the mountain climbers.
When I came home on leave, I thought I would surely have changed into a dashing figure... just because I was dressed for the part. But my friends laughed when they saw me in my navy uniform. I guess I must have been a sight, but I didn't realize I looked that silly. And I was so proud to come home in that uniform!
A face in the picture would bother me, so I'd rub it out with the turpentine and do it over.
Things aren't much wilder now, I don't think, than they were back then. Of course I just read about all the goings-on now. Ha.
It was a pretty rough neighborhood where I grew up The really tough places were over around Third Avenue where it ran into the Harlem River, but we weren't far away.
Lady Bird Johnson had that extra-special Southern charm that you just can't resist. Mrs. Goldwater was charming, too. And she was the smart one. She really didn't want to be the First Lady at all. And she got her wish.
I was asked to illustrate the classics of Mark Twain. He's one of my very favorite authors. I felt great!
I would take the wrong approach for a teacher, I guess... But there was always someone in a class who would raise an objection to my way. They'd want to get into an argument with me. And I was no good at arguing. So I figured if that was what teaching was like, I better leave it to someone who knows how to maneuver an argument. I'd stick to what I knew-painting. So I didn't stay long at the Los Angeles County Artists School.
Guess I never really belonged in Westchester. I was never really happy there. But the hard-dirt farmers in Vermont-when I got with them, it was like coming home.
I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be. So I painted only the ideal aspects of it - pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers... only foxy grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the backyard.
You must first spend some time getting your model to relax. Then you'll get a natural expression.
If the public dislikes one of my Post covers, I can't help disliking it myself.