<Archive Obituaries> Norman Rockwell (November 8th 1978)
Bill Schenley
Self-Portrait:
http://www.norman-rockwell.info/image/triple-self-t.jpg
Artist Norman Rockwell died at his home just before midnight
Wednesday, said his wife, Molly.
"He didn't die of anything except being 84 years old," Mrs. Rockwell
said in a telephone interview. "He had been ill a long time. He died
at home."
In an interview with the Associated Press, Mrs. Rockwell said her
husband "was very devoted to his work. His work was his passion."
Asked how she thought he should be remembered, she said: "I should
think . . . as an artist and illustrator . . . a well-known artist and
illustrator."
Rockwell, who sold his first illustrations to the Saturday Evening
Post at age 22, subsequently painted some 360 covers for the magazine.
The Post covers, Mrs. Rockwell said, were his "greatest delight."
After the Post changed ownership, she said, Rockwell switched to Look
magazine, where he "became very much more interested in civic
problems."
Rockwell did illustrations for many other magazines during his long
career, including a Post cover celebrating the trans-Atlantic flight
of Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and a Look magazine picture depicting the
imprint of Neil Armstrong's left foot on the dusty surface of the Moon
after the first moonlanding in 1969.
But most of his illustrations were folksy, warm scenes of small-town
Americana.
In 1960, he said of his work: "Maybe as I grew up and found the world
wasn't the perfectly pleasant place I had thought it to be, I
unconsciously decided that if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be,
and so painted only the ideal aspects of it - pictures in which there
were no slatterns or self-centered mothers, in which, on the contrary,
there were only Foxy Grandpas who played baseball with the kids and
boys fished from logs and got up circuses in the backyard."
Rockwell worked in his studio in Stockbridge, a small town in western
Massachusetts. There he found the models for many of his pictures.
But the famous also posed for Rockwell - he painted politicians for
more than four decades. His favorite president was Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
"When Ike gave you that grin he was an artist's delight," he once
said.
His least favorite was Richard Nixon, he once told a friend, "because
I couldn't find anything there."
In the turbulent 1980s, Rockwell exhibited a strong social conscience,
commenting on canvas mostly for Look on civil rights, space
exploration, the generation gap, the Vietnam war.
He made his last public appearance in 1976 in Stockbridge at a "Horman
Rockwell Day" parade.
Born in New York City, Rockwell dropped out of high school at 16 to
enroll in the Arts Students League. His earned his first commissions
there, designing four original Christmas cards for the wealthy Mrs.
Arnold Constable.
Rockwell's first marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Mary, was
the mother of his three sons.Mary Rockwell died in 1959, and the
illustrator subsequently married Molly Punderson, a retired teacher.
At age 76, Rockwell told an interviewer his work was always improving:
"Someone once asked Picasso his favorite of all the pictures he ever
painted and he replied, 'The next one.'
"I'll echo the master."
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Photo:
http://www.nndb.com/people/522/000026444/norman-rockwell-sized.jpg
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FROM: The Associated Press (November 11th 1978) ~
By Martin J. Waters, Press Writer
Berkshire mountain neighbors said farewell Saturday to artist Norman
Rockwell, who was eulogized as "a townsman, a neighbor, a friend."
About 300 persons filled St. Paul's Episcopal Church for the 35-minute
funeral service while about 200 others stood quietly outside. Boy
Scouts, a group frequently illustrated by Rockwell, stood as honor
guards on the walkways leading to the church.
David H. Wood, director of a Rockwell museum in Stockbridge,
eulogized: "I think of Norman Rockwell as a townsman. He did not seek
seclusion or special treatment.
"He lived with us and among us. A very special relationship came about
between us. In a sense, he was a townsman of the world as much as of
Stockbridge. Now he is a townsman of a stiller town."
The Rev. Theodore H. Evans Jr. opened the service by calling it one
"of thanksgiving . . . for the life of our friend, Norman Rockwell.
Seated in the front pews were Rockwell's third wife, Molly, and his
three sons by his second marriage - Thomas, Peter and Jarvis.
With Jarvis and five local friends of Rockwell serving as pallbearers,
the artist's maple casket was taken to Stockbridge Cemetery for burial
next to the grave of his second wife, Mary, who died in 1959.
Rockwell was laid to rest beneath a simply granite marker in the
family plot set off by hedges.
While Rockwell's adopted hometown said a somber goodbye, art galleries
across the nation reported a renewal of the American public's romance
with Rockwell's work.
Following his death Wednesday at age 84, demand suddenly surged for
Rockwell depictions of small-town folk, laughing children, benevolent
pets and a peaceful, bucolic America.
Use of the cramped gray stone church, with just 275 seats, for his
funeral required that admission be only by ticket. Most of the seats
not set aside for family acquaintances were available only to the
2,200 Stockbridge residents - the people Rockwill used almost
exclusively as models for his romantic paintings of Americana.
The man was gone, but his spirit remained a presence in Stockbridge,
where original Rockwell paintings and lithographs abound. More than a
dozen hang in a branch bank office near Rockwell's home. Some 80
others are on display at the old Corner House Museum. Private homes
hold many more.
Demand for his works had expanded nationally in the past 10 years,
going unsatisfied as Rockwell's output declined with his fading
health. Although critics still frowned, the public treated as high art
these works of a man who called himself "just a hack illustrator."
And art dealers from San Diego to Boston said Friday they were being
inundated with new requests for Rockwell works. "Surge is not the
work, it's incredible," said a New York art saleswoman.
Experts said the previous top price for a Rockwell original - more
than $100,000 - likely would rise. In Southern California last year,
limited edition prints that first went for $450 each sold for $6,000.
"The desire for his original paintings was at a fever pitch even
before he died," said Eleanor Ettinger, president of the New York City
firm that publishes Rockwell lithographs.
"I've been getting calls from galleries throughout the United States
saying people have been calling and coming in in incredible numbers.
Some galleries are refusing to sell the pieces, waiting to see what
happens to prices," she said.
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His work: http://www.karbafoo.com/images/rockwell.jpg
http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2005/03/24/221956/portraitofJFKNR.jpg
http://www.fumeursdepipe.net/images/Norman%20Rockwell.jpg
http://www.fundraisingart.com/Images/Rockwell%20BottomO6th%20NR0218.jpg
http://www.duvekot.ca/eliane/archives/Norman_Rockwell.jpg
http://www.abbeville.com/images-catalog/full-size/1558592024.jpg
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/r/rockwell/rockwell_mirror.jpg
http://www.walnet.org/members/andy_sorfleet/norman_rockwell/rockwell_crackersinBed.2.jpg
http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/artists/Norman%20Rockwell/Girl%20with%20Black%20Eye.jpg
http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/artists/Norman%20Rockwell/The%20problem%20we%20all%20live%20with.jpg