We made it to the far reaches of Western MA to the city of Stockbridge where Norman Rockwell lived and has a museum with a healthy collection. I’d never seen this piece called “The Gossips” and fell in love with it. I read about the painting and Norman posed for the person being gossiped and his wife is in the third row, 2nd and 3rd person. I had actually noticed that that was one of few people that he had painted multiple profiles of and thought she was the prettiest too! I saw a few more of his paintings that had a frame-by-frame narrative.  “Day in the Life of a Boy”, “Day in the Life of a Girl”, “Family Tree.” He is most famous for his covers for the Saturday Evening Post, which he started at age 22, so many of which are really incredible and often graphically clever. He focused on children often and there is a great one of a black girl going to her first day of school in LA escorted by the National Guard with graffiti and crushed tomatoes around her. “Coming and Going” is a really cool one too. He painted Lincoln a lot and considered him to be the Greatest American. He did portraits of Eisenhower and JFK that were interesting. There was one from Thanksgiving 1945 where a your war veteran is peeling potatoes with his mom and it is interesting because it I guess shows that he is happy to do at home what he hated to do during the war. Then there’s that whole great collection of kids who are awkward and so relate-able. I can’t sense how many paintings he turned out a year, but he would often have to do sketches for approval prior to completing the piece. I found it peculiar that he never took the actual photographs he painted from. He had a team of photographers that would travel with him / work for him. One of his best quotes was when asked ‘How much were you paid for a particular cover?” by a reporter at Time magazine he said “Twice as much as it’s worth.” Anyways those are some of the things I remember learning about my new friend. I think Mr. Norman Rockwell is one of my favorite graphic designers, regardless of what he is called.

We made it to the far reaches of Western MA to the city of Stockbridge where Norman Rockwell lived and has a museum with a healthy collection. I’d never seen this piece called “The Gossips” and fell in love with it. I read about the painting and Norman posed for the person being gossiped and his wife is in the third row, 2nd and 3rd person. I had actually noticed that that was one of few people that he had painted multiple profiles of and thought she was the prettiest too!

I saw a few more of his paintings that had a frame-by-frame narrative.  “Day in the Life of a Boy”, “Day in the Life of a Girl”, “Family Tree.”

He is most famous for his covers for the Saturday Evening Post, which he started at age 22, so many of which are really incredible and often graphically clever. He focused on children often and there is a great one of a black girl going to her first day of school in LA escorted by the National Guard with graffiti and crushed tomatoes around her. “Coming and Going” is a really cool one too. He painted Lincoln a lot and considered him to be the Greatest American. He did portraits of Eisenhower and JFK that were interesting. There was one from Thanksgiving 1945 where a your war veteran is peeling potatoes with his mom and it is interesting because it I guess shows that he is happy to do at home what he hated to do during the war. Then there’s that whole great collection of kids who are awkward and so relate-able.

I can’t sense how many paintings he turned out a year, but he would often have to do sketches for approval prior to completing the piece. I found it peculiar that he never took the actual photographs he painted from. He had a team of photographers that would travel with him / work for him.

One of his best quotes was when asked ‘How much were you paid for a particular cover?” by a reporter at Time magazine he said “Twice as much as it’s worth.”

Anyways those are some of the things I remember learning about my new friend. I think Mr. Norman Rockwell is one of my favorite graphic designers, regardless of what he is called.

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