Norman Perceval Rockwell, born in New York City 1894, has always been fascinated with art although it was disliked by his mother. His family included his mother, father, brother named Jarvis, and of course himself. Growing up, Rockwell was a pale skinny child with thick glasses. He envied Jarvis and the other boys because of their physical grace and was determined to do something with his scrawny body. After a month of exercising with no results, Rockwell decided to focus on his talent; art.
He started painting in 1912 at just 18-years-old and retired in 1976, two years before he died in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The artist completed roughly 4,000 drawings and paintings and over 520 magazine covers. At age fourteen, he enrolled at the New York School for art and later quit high school after his sophomore year, when he was only fifteen-years-old. Then on the next year he earned commission for four Christmas card paintings.
A Red Cross Man in the Making by Norman Rockwell (...
The Rookie, one of many Saturday Evening Post cove...
The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell, d...He moved to Rachelle, Massachusetts in 1916 and managed to sell his first Saturday Evening Post cover called Boy with Baby Carriage. During the years of WWI, his enlistment was refused since he was a skinny kid who was 81 pounds underweight. However, Rockwell was later employed as a military artist. Later in his life, he called his lack of education "a badge of honor" because he had accomplished so much without it.
Painting to please his audience, Norman Rockwell likes to put happiness in his work along with a bit of humor. His creations are realistic and almost photographical and consist in themes of patriotism, holidays, diligence, family, courtship and etc. He says he painted "life as I would like it be". The artist is very interested in people and always uses models for his work. In his pictures, he showed the...