Norman Rockwell: Cover Artist

Dreaming up ideas for magazine covers and putting them to canvas was Norman Rockwell’s true passion. Although he painted Boy Scout calendars for most of his life, in addition to countless advertisements and story illustrations, magazine cover assignments gave Rockwell the freedom to create images that have come to symbolize American life in the early twentieth century.

No Swimming

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Expense Account, 1957
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, November 30, 1957
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.6

Rockwell conceived this picture as a business traveler’s desperate late-night attempt to reconcile his expense account. To augment his story he used lots of ready props⸺his numerous business trips to New York and his 1955 round-the-world trip for Pan American Airlines provided him with ticket stubs, receipts, and nightclub ephemera.

Post readers reacted to the cover with an assortment of feelings. A man from Norfolk, Virginia, considered the cover to be “far from funny . . . a moral tragedy,” though a Cleveland reader called it “superb,” and said he did a lot of traveling and appreciated the character’s dilemma. A woman from Texas wrote that her three-year-old son learned his first curse word while his father was preparing his expense account.

Biographer Deborah Solomon noted, “Magazine covers were his priority and his great love. Ads and calendars would always be the part of his career that he liked least. Unlike his magazine covers, for which he usually generated his own story ideas and presided over their progress from roughs to charcoal layouts to framed paintings, ad agencies furnished him with ready-made ideas and expected him to illustrate them to specification. For this reason, he believed his Post covers had creative integrity and the potential for some kind of greatness, while diminishing his ads as hack work undertaken strictly for the money….Rockwell put magazine covers on a higher creative plane and staked his career on them.”

Even as a young illustrator, Rockwell attracted the attention of publishers. By the age of nineteen, his first cover art appeared on the September 1913 issue of Boys’ Life magazine, and as the publication’s art director, he helped to shape the direction of the periodical in its early years, Rockwell illustrated scores of paintings and drawings that appeared on the covers and pages of American Boy, Boys’ Life, St. Nicholas, Youth’s Companion, The Country Gentleman, American Magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post. 

In a thoughtful summation of Rockwell’s forty-seven-year career at the Post, New York Times art critic David L. Shirey reported on a 1972 retrospective exhibition of the artist’s paintings at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He noted…

“One has to smile at the embarrassing situations that the artist’s characters get caught up in and at the common human foibles we are all subject to. Mr. Rockwell creates an Eden for us. It may be nonexistent, but it offers a temporary refuge from reality. He never shows us the sad and somber side of life. If there is unhappiness in his work, it lasts for but a moment.” – David L. Shirey

In the 1960s, Rockwell turned his attention to more serious social concerns, having secured his reputation as a trusted visual commentator.

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Boy with Baby Carriage, 1916
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1916
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.001

Though he had painted over a dozen magazine covers by 1916, this illustration was Rockwell’s very first Post cover, for which he was paid $75. He wrote, “In those days the cover of the Post was the greatest show window in America for an illustrator. If you did a cover for the Post you had arrived.  . . . Two million subscribers and then their wives, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, friends. Wow! All looking at my cover.”

Though humorous in nature, this is one of many covers where Rockwell featured children in a way that reflected a serious shift in the societal view of masculinity, frequently discussed in the national press. Many in the middle-class feared a general feminization of American life and culture. The anxiety was prompted by a series of social, cultural, and economic developments that challenged traditional masculine authority. The closing of the frontier, the women’s movement, and the growth of urban, corporate life, for example, were perceived as threats to patriarchal power. Billy Payne, a frequent model in Rockwell’s early paintings, appeared on the cover as the model for all three boys.

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Veterans of Two Wars, 1918
Cover illustration for The Red Cross Magazine, June 1918
Oil on canvas
Private Collection

In the second of four covers Rockwell produced for The Red Cross Magazine between 1918 and 1920, a World War I soldier appears between two veterans of both sides of the United States Civil War who stand proudly behind the young man. The veterans are adorned with numerous medals, while the young soldier prepares to ship off to Europe where he will earn his commendations.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

“The commonplaces of America are to me the richest subjects in art.”
⸺Norman Rockwell

Among Norman Rockwell’s best-known illustrations are heartwarming scenes that capture the essence of American holiday traditions celebrated throughout the year⸺from Valentine’s Day and Independence Day to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the magic of the Christmas season.

Rockwell’s connection to holiday-inspired art can be traced to his youth, when at the age of fifteen, a parishioner of his family’s church employed his talents for Christmas card designs. As an adult, Rockwell would work with Hallmark, a company that continues to market his midcentury illustrations for holiday greeting cards. The Saturday Evening Post, which showcased his art for forty-seven years, typically delegated Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s covers to its most popular illustrators. During Rockwell’s first year with the magazine in 1916, his work was featured on a December cover, and subsequently, the front pages of many additional holiday issues were assigned to him. Seasonal rituals and snowy New England landscapes are viewed through the eyes of homecoming veterans and cheerful, intergenerational families who inhabit Rockwell’s artworks.

Throughout his career, Rockwell considered a strong visual story concept was “the first thing and the last,” no matter the subject. He often told reporters that despite his unending work schedule, he indulged himself by taking a half-day off on Christmas. Though he used his own art to embellish seasonal cards for friends and family, he was not overly sentimental about the holidays. He viewed turkey carving as “a challenge rather than an invitation,” and he once remarked, “I’ve never played Santa Claus in my life. I wouldn’t dare to.”  Holiday festivities were prominently featured in Rockwell’s work, and inspired readers to consider how their own experiences reflected, or stood in contrast, to those portrayed in his art. Many of Rockwell’s beloved seasonal images are on view.

Learn more…

IMAGES

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Foller the Leader (Boys Walking Fence Rail), 1919
Cover illustration for The Country Gentleman, November 15, 1919
Oil on canvas
Private Collection

Between 1917 and 1922, Rockwell created thirty-four covers for The Country Gentleman, another publication of Curtis Publishing Company, publishers of The Saturday Evening Post. On many of these covers, Rockwell depicts the adventures and misadventures of children left to their own devices. Covers include scenes of children swimming, fishing, staging plays, ice skating, and even the ill results of smoking a pipe, in the May 15, 1920 cover titled Retribution!

This painting was recently discovered in very poor condition in a basement behind some storm windows. The lucky owners took the damaged work to the Williamstown + Atlanta Art Conservation Center in Williamstown, Massachusetts where it was painstakingly restored to its original state. Foller the Leader is on view to the public for the very first time.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
No Swimming, 1921
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, June 4, 1921
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.015

When this iconic cover image was published, Norman Rockwell had painted thirty-nine Post covers in just five years. Born and raised on the upper west side of Manhattan, Norman Rockwell disliked the harsh realities of city life. He described the streets of New York as crowded, unsettling, and even inhumane, softened only by summers spent with his family on boarding farms on Long Island and in upstate New York. These seasonal idylls provided a store of memories that would weave their way into his work for decades to come. “The summers I spent in the country as a child became part of this idealized view of life,” Rockwell said. “But I wasn’t a country boy. I didn’t really live that kind of life.” His vision of a carefree childhood came to be accepted as archetypal by many, whether they experienced it themselves, or not. Images of swimmers of all ages appeared in numerous covers and calendars painted by Rockwell throughout his career.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Vacation’s Over, 1921
Cover illustration for Literary Digest, August 27, 1921
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1991.03

From 1918 to 1923, Norman Rockwell produced forty-seven covers for Literary Digest magazine. His topical images for the current events weekly portrayed a rich cross-section of American society. Covers pictured city and country dwellers and people of all ages and economic classes at work, in school, enjoying leisure activities, or simply daydreaming.

Vacation’s Over pictures a well-to-do little girl returning from vacation. Carrying a puppy, perhaps acquired during her travels, she is surrounded by her steamer trunk adorned with travel stickers, a satchel, and a Chinese lunch basket. Miniature paintings on each side of the canvas⸺one of a country scene and the other of a city scene⸺may document places she has visited. The lure and joy of travel is keenly felt in this painting.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Thanksgiving Ye Glutton, 1923
Cover illustration for Life, November 22, 1923
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection NRM.1986.03

Second only to the Saturday Evening Post in popularity at the time, Life featured twenty-eight covers painted by Rockwell between 1917 and 1924. Though Life covers typically depicted politics and humor, during World War I the magazine published fifteen Rockwell covers that reflected the experiences of people at home and abroad as they endured through World War I.

Though he occasionally wrote about the difficulty in finding ideas for magazine covers, he noted, “In wartime the problem vanishes. Everyone in the country is thinking along the same lines, the war penetrates into everyone’s life. . . . And during the war there’s always a crowd of new and different ideas hanging around. . . . A friend told me that a woman in town had two sons in service. I painted a smiling mother with a soldier on one arm, a sailor on the other.” That cover, titled The Lord Loveth a Cheerful Giver, was published on the November 8, 1917 issue of Life.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Boy Painting Girl’s Slicker (She’s My Baby), 1927
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, June 4, 1927
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William M. Young Jr., NRM.2007.06

Norman Rockwell’s output in the 1920s was prodigious. Throughout the decade, he produced ninety-seven Post covers, or thirty percent of his total Post output from 1916 to 1963.

On May 10, 1927, the movie “She’s My Baby,” about a couple whose blissful marriage turns sour but is later saved, debuted. Advance trailers for the movie may have inspired Rockwell to use the title in his June 4 Saturday Evening Postcover. At the time, Rockwell was reaping the popularity and financial rewards of his artistic success, and he and wife Irene were also enjoying New Rochelle’s high society. They gave and attended lavish parties and socialized at New Rochelle’s yacht and country clubs. But the glamour and festivities camouflaged a failed marriage. Like the script of “She’s My Baby,” the Rockwell’s marriage was disintegrating; unlike the movie, it would not be saved.

Rockwell offers a mixture of textures and patterns to vary an otherwise simple composition. The sheen of the raincoat and the girl’s curls contrast with the rough patina of old shoe leather and the velvety hand of felt hats. The patterned sweater and window-pane-checkered pants add more visual spice. Colors offset each other in classic complementary fashion—a bluish-green slicker against an orangey-red hat. The paint brush leads the eye to the heart symbol, the lettered “She’s My Baby,” and ultimately to the young girl’s face.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Good Friends, 1925
Cover illustration for Boys’ Life, February 1927
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Partial gift of Robert P. McNeill and Thomas B. McNeill in memory of Don McNeill, NRM.2003.01

This painting featuring a Boy Scout feeding an Irish Setter’s litter of puppies is both heartwarming and reflective of his responsibility to help those who are dependent. The image serves as a visual reminder of Scout Law which requires a Scout to be “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” The Irish Setter mirrors the boy’s focus on the pups, and Rockwell must have delighted in studying their various postures and expressions⸺each stance and pose is distinctive and endearing.

Good Friends was intended as an illustration for the Boy Scouts’ 1927 calendar. Since calendar publications required nearly two years of production time, Good Friends was painted in 1925 for the 1927 edition. It was Rockwell’s third in a series of fifty-one paintings used by the Boy Scouts of America as calendar illustrations and Boys’ Life magazine covers.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell 1894–1978
Football Hero (Letterman), 1938
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, November 19, 1938
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Gift of Connie Adams Maple, NRM.1975.02

This Post cover from 1938 is typical of Rockwell’s work of the period. Although America remained in the throes of the Great Depression, Post covers continued to feature romantic scenes and humorous vignettes. The football player struggles to maintain his pose while a cheerleader pins his school letter to his football sweater. Here, Rockwell uses small touches of red— the girl’s lips, her thimble, the sewing kit—to enliven this cover. The loose measuring tape adds a layer of depth to the painting.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
The Census Taker, 1940
Cover of The Saturday Evening Post, April 27, 1940
Tearsheet
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, RC.2007.1.190

Rockwell’s ability to design a well-crafted Post cover was not always a simple task. He often struggled with visualizing the subject of his next painting. One solution he devised was something he called “the timely idea.”

Upon becoming aware of popular fads or news events, Rockwell would sometimes develop a narrative image that he would later put to canvas. Through this method he produced covers for the Post which included current topics such as the jazz craze, Ouija boards, Charles Lindbergh’s flight over the Atlantic Ocean, the 1948 presidential election, and in this case, the 1940 census. In this humorous take, a mother struggles to count the number of children in her house.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell 1894–1978
Going and Coming, 1947
Painting for The Saturday Evening Post cover, August 30, 1947
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRACT.1973.9

Rockwell’s Post covers were often inspired by seasonal or topical subjects. This was especially true after the 1943 studio fire that destroyed his collection of historical costumes. Not only was a magazine cover intended to be a story that was easily “read” and understood, but it was also intended to be relevant to the reader.

Going and Coming, published in August 1947, is a good example of a story painting that is both seasonal and topical. The added ingredient of humor makes it even more engaging and thus contributes to its success. The use of two images within one picture allows Rockwell to create a continuum of time. We see the before and the after of the imagined event, a family’s summer outing by the lake. Clues abound for the reader’s enjoyment in unraveling the story line. The use of a split canvas to portray a juxtaposition of an event, time, age, or place is an effective device that invites comparison of the two scenes.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Marriage License, 1955
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, June 11, 1955
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.014

Norman Rockwell painted two wedding-themed covers for The Saturday Evening Post: Organist Waiting for Cue, painted in 1928, and Marriage License, painted in 1955. Set in the town clerk’s office just footsteps away from Rockwell’s first Stockbridge studio on Main Street, Marriage License captures his fascination with the somber wood-paneled interiors of his favorite seventeenth-century Dutch painters. Indeed, the building itself is fashioned after one pictured in Jan Vermeer’s A Street in Delft.  In keeping with the older style, Rockwell replaced an existing metal file cabinet in the left foreground with an old railroad station stove. Variety store owner, Jason Braman, his model for the town clerk, had recently lost his wife, and the authenticity of his feelings adds poignancy in this study of youth and old age.

As it happened, a marriage was about to take place in the Rockwell family. Son Tom came home from Bard College that summer with fiancée Gail Sudler, and the couple married on July 16, 1955. He opened a bookstore on Main Street, Stockridge, where he, his brother Peter, and Sue Erikson, daughter of Rockwell’s therapist Erik Erikson, worked.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Portrait of John F. Kennedy, 1960
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, October 29, 1960
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1978.01

In 1960, with the rise in popularity of television, rapidly changing culture, use of photography on magazine covers, and a turnover in Post’s staff, Rockwell’s days at the magazine were numbered. His son Tom Rockwell noted, “[In the early 1960s] . . . the Post continued to slide. [Editor] Ken Stuart left. In the summer of 1962, the editors decided to use mostly portraits or photographs on the covers…” Indeed, the incoming editors of the Post told Rockwell to cease painting his popular narrative subjects of the past, and to shift his focus to the creation of portraits of politicians and celebrities.

In 1960, as in the past, Rockwell portrayed the nation’s presidential candidates⸺this time featuring Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Rockwell suggested it would be best to use a dignified pose that did not emphasize Kennedy’s youth, and Kennedy agreed. His portrait debuted on the cover of the October 29, 1960 Saturday Evening Post just days before the election. Republished in memoriam with a black border on December 14, 1963 after President Kennedy’s assassination, the painting also proved to be Rockwell’s final Post cover.

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Liberty Bell (Celebration), 1976
Cover illustration for American Artist, October 29, 1960
Oil on canvas
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1988.01

In the spring of 1975, Rockwell was approached by editors of American Artist to do the cover for their July 1976 bicentennial issue. Learning of his preference for long deadlines, they requested well in advance that he paint a picture of himself tying a birthday ribbon around the Liberty Bell. Editor Susan Meyer asked Rockwell to include his travel paint box, paints, and brushes under the bell, to “balance the composition nicely” and to “help identify the subject as an artist.” An essay inside the issue described Rockwell’s process; when this piece was published, it had been ten years since a Rockwell painting had appeared on the cover of a magazine. This, his last cover, commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of the nation whose character he had reflected in his paintings for more than sixty years.

Once graceful and precise, Rockwell’s pencil lines and brush strokes became more rigid with the diminished vision and ill health that he experienced in his eighties. Nonetheless, still immensely popular, he received and fulfilled portrait commissions from Frank Sinatra, Arnold Palmer, John Wayne, Albert Schweitzer, and Ross Perot—including himself, his wife, his son, and two business associates.

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VENUE(S)

Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road, Stockbridge, MA 01262

Hours

OPEN
Mon 10am-4pm
Tue 10am-4pm
Thu 10am-4pm
Fri 10am-4pm
Sat 10am-5pm
Sun 10am-5pm

CLOSED
Wednesdays
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
New Year’s Day
ROCKWELL’S STUDIO
Re-opens May 2 – November 10, 2024
closed Wednesdays
TERRACE CAFÉ
Closed for the season.
Re-opens June 2024

Special Holiday Hours: Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve: 10am-3pm.
When attending the Museum, please observe our COVID-19 policies; in addition to Massachusetts Travel Guidelines.

Admissions

Save time by purchasing your tickets online in advance of your visit!  Online reservations for visits through April 30, 2024 available for purchase. Museum Visit admission is required for all tours.

Buy Admission

Members Adult Seniors /
Retired Military		 Children /
Active Military		 MA Teachers College
Students
Museum Visit: Free $25 $23 Free $22 $10
Guided Tour:
Rockwell’s Life & Art
(40 minutes)		 Free + $10 + $10 Free + $10 + $10
Curator Tour:
Leo Lionni		 Free + $15 + $15 Free + $15 + $15

Save time by purchasing your tickets online in advance of your visit!  Online reservations for visits through April 30, 2024 available for purchase. Museum Visit admission is required for all tours.

Buy Admission

Museum Visit:
Members, Children, & Active Military: FREE
Adults: $25
Seniors & Retired Military: $23
MA Teachers: $22
College Students: $10

Guided Tour:
Rockwell’s Life & Art
(40 minutes) – additional purchase
Members, Children, & Active Military: FREE
Ticket per person: $10

Curator Tour:
Leo Lionni
Members, Children, & Active Military: FREE
Adults: $15
Seniors & Retired Military: $15
College Students: $15

Additional Discount Opportunities:

  • Front Line Medical Workers receive free admission.
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For Free and Reduced prices, you may be required to present a valid ID demonstrating your status for qualifying for discounted pricing.

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DIRECTIONS

Norman Rockwell Museum
9 Glendale Road Route 183
Stockbridge, MA 01262
413-931-2221

Download a Printable version of Driving Directions (acrobat PDF).

Important note: Many GPS and online maps do not accurately place Norman Rockwell Museum*. Please use the directions provided here and this map image for reference. Google Maps & Directions are correct! http://maps.google.com/

* Please help us inform the mapping service companies that incorrectly locate the Museum; let your GPS or online provider know and/or advise our Visitor Services office which source provided faulty directions.

Route 7 runs north to south through the Berkshires. Follow Route 7 South to Stockbridge. Turn right onto Route 102 West and follow through Main Street Stockbridge. Shortly after going through town, you will veer to the right to stay on Route 102 West for approximately 1.8 miles. At the flashing light, make a left onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.

Route 7 runs north to south through the Berkshires. Follow Route 7 North into Stockbridge. Turn left onto Route 102 West at the stop sign next to The Red Lion Inn. Shortly after you make the left turn, you will veer to the right to stay on Route 102 West for approximately 1.8 miles. At the flashing light, make a left onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.

Boston (two-and-a-half hours) or Springfield (one hour):
Take the Ma ssachusetts Turnpike (I-90) West, getting off at exit 10 (formerly exit 2) – Lee. At the light at the end of the ramp turn left onto Route 20 East and then immediately turn right onto Route 102 West. Follow Route 102 West into Stockbridge Center (about five miles). Continue going west on Route 102 (Main St.). Shortly after going through town, you will veer to the right to stay on Route 102 West for approximately 1.8 miles. At the flashing light, make a left onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.

from Albany and west: (one hour) Take I-90 east to exit B3 – Route 22. Go south on New York Route 22 to Massachusetts Route 102 East. Stay on Route 102 East through West Stockbridge. Continue on Route 102 East approximately 5.5 miles until you come to a blinking light at the intersection of Route 183. Make a right at the blinking light onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.

(two-and-a-half hours) Take either the New York State Thruway or the Taconic State Parkway to I-90 East. Follow I-90 East to exit B3 – Route 22. Go south on New York Route 22 to Massachusetts Route 102 East. Stay on Route 102 East through West Stockbridge. Continue on Route 102 East approximately 5.5 miles until you come to a blinking light at the intersection of Route 183. Make a right at the blinking light onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.

(one-and-a-half hours) Take I-91 North to the Massachusetts Turnpike. Take the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) West, getting off at exit 10 (formerly exit 2) – Lee. At the light at the end of the ramp turn left onto Route 20 East and then immediately turn right onto Route 102 West. Follow Route 102 West into Stockbridge Center (about five miles). Continue going west on Route 102 (Main St.). Shortly after going through town, you will veer to the right to stay on Route 102 West for approximately 1.8 miles. At the flashing light, make a left onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.

(five minutes)
Go west on Route 102 (Main St.). Shortly after going through town, you will veer to the right to stay on Route 102 West for approximately 1.8 miles. At the flashing light, make a left onto Route 183 South and the Museum entrance is 0.6 miles down on the left.