Norman Rockwell by Laura Claridge

Author:Laura Claridge
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781588360649
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

17

Reconfiguring

Mary’s optimism aside, her husband still saw no way to escape what he considered his dead-end path—churning out, with enormous expenditure of energy, cover after cover for The Saturday Evening Post, receiving the praise of readers grateful that “their” artist wasn’t like those “real” modern artists. Years later, after this line of praise became constant, he told his youngest son ruefully, “Just once, I’d like for someone to tell me that they think Picasso is good, and that I am too.” Instead, he received praise such as that lavished by the Heritage Club’s monthly publication to its mainly well-educated middle-class members: “Although some may say that Picasso is a better artist than Norman Rockwell, although some will say that Thomas Hart Benton is a better artist than Norman Rockwell, it cannot be denied that Norman Rockwell is the best known artist in this country: his name is known in household, cabaret or farm. And this is because he paints like an imp.”

Infrequently, an artist whom the illustrator respected would dare to assert a contrarian opinion of Rockwell’s value. George Grosz, the German Expressionist, insisted, “He has excellent technique, great strength, and a clearness of touch that the old masters had.” Grosz, whose earlier roots in Berlin Dadaism and whose harsh caricature of the German bourgeoisie would not have made him an immediately obvious choice to defend Rockwell, believed that “his things are so universal that he would be appreciated anywhere.”

In 1935, Rockwell was offered a prestigious commission that reminded him of the historical antecedents that had motivated his love of illustration. The chance to place his name next to those heroes who had illustrated the classics helped to reinvigorate his stride. The occasion was the centennial year of Samuel L. Clemens’s birth, and one of Rockwell’s greatest admirers, George Macy (of department store fame), decided that his Heritage Press should publish new editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Although a few well-known illustrators had taken their turn at the books, a stellar performance akin to that achieved by H. K. Browne or Edward Kemble for Dickens had eluded them. Even Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth had illustrated a few of Twain’s texts, but nobody had gotten his two most famous works quite right yet, at least as far as George Macy was concerned.

Rockwell could even claim that Clemens, or Mark Twain, as he was known to his public, already flowed, albeit weakly, through the bloodlines of the illustrator’s family: Twain had been a weekend houseguest of Uncle Sam Rockwell’s wife around the time that Waring and Nancy were getting married. A more specific kinship surfaced when Rockwell discovered that Twain seemed at least a blood brother to himself, another artist who created out of the same compensatory needs that Rockwell did. The match of raconteurs, author to illustrator, seemed ideal. Almost in wonder, Rockwell related to a contemporary writer the story of an old judge who had known the author as a young boy: “He told me that

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