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 All About Art
Norman Rockwell and Americana
published: February 2008
By Tamar Burris, Contributing Writer
Email Author
Norman Rockwell was one of America's most beloved artists. Although he created thousands of magazine covers, book and story illustrations and advertisements, he is best known for his Saturday Evening Post illustrations that depicted the values and events of life in America.
Norman Percevel Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894, in New York City. In addition to being a businessman, Norman's father was also an amateur artist, and Norman's mother liked to paint, so it was no surprise that Norman loved art. Young Norman was not a good athlete. He had poor eyesight and needed to wear special shoes. But art was something that he loved and something at which he could be good. When Norman was a small boy, he would listen to his father read books aloud and draw sketches of the characters in the stories. By the time he was a teenager, Norman knew he wanted to be an artist. So, during his sophomore year, Norman left high school to study art at the National Academy of Design.
In 1910, Norman transferred to the Art Students League to continue his studies. When he was 16, he got his first small job as an illustrator, painting a series of four Christmas cards. And the following year, Norman landed his first "real" job, illustrating a series of children's books titled Tell Me Why Stories. Norman's illustrations were a hit, and he soon began getting more jobs. He was hired as art director for Boys' Life magazine, and in 1916, he sold his first cover illustration to The Saturday Evening Post. Norman continued selling his artwork to many magazines and other publications and created a total of 321 covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Each of his pieces showed a different example of the typical American life, a style called Americana. His covers were so successful that more than 50,000 extra copies of the newspaper were sold every time Norman's art appeared on the front!
Through the years, Norman's Americana art appeared all over the world. In July 1976, Norman published his final piece for the cover of American Artist magazine. He died on November 8, 1978, at the age of 84.
Written by Tamar Burris, a former elementary school teacher who now works as a freelance writer and curriculum developer for PBS, the Discovery Channel and other education-related companies. Sources: Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont, www.normanrockwellvt.com; The Official Site of Norman Rockwell, www.normanrockwell.com. It is believed that use of the magazine cover shown qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.
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