Halloween by Norman Rockwell October 23, 1920
© 1920 SEPS. All Rights Reserved.

The Post’s Great Pumpkin Patch

Watch out for little girl goblins! This one is scaring grandpa with her jack-o’-lantern on Norman Rockwell’s 1920 Halloween cover. The dog seems unfazed, however, perhaps because he glimpses a skirt and cute little shoes under the sheet.

Now, we don’t know if the boy on J.C. Leyendecker’s November 1913 cover plans a jack-o’-lantern with his own great pumpkin in a wheelbarrow, but if he does, someone has a LOT of scooping out and carving to do. We suspect some good old-fashioned pumpkin pies are in the works. Perhaps the little girl in Sarah Stilwell-Weber’s cover of 1914 has the same idea. It seems to be more pumpkin than she can handle—she could use the assistance of the boy with the wheelbarrow.

Artist John Falter also illustrated another fall favorite that appeared on the November 1, 1952, cover depicting a man and four children walking away with their pumpkin choices. Nothing says autumn like haystacks and pumpkins.

A witch’s work is never done, and the one on Frederic Stanley’s October 1928 cover is busily carving her pumpkins.

An October 1946 cover of a scarecrow in a pumpkin patch seems simple enough, but the story behind it isn’t. Artist John Atherton searched all of Vermont for a suitable scarecrow and didn’t find it. So he constructed his own, borrowing clothing from a half dozen sources to come up with a sufficiently spiffy specimen, so spiffy in fact, it appears to be attracting crows.

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October 31, 2009