Ellen Pyle (1876-1936) was known for her beautiful use of color. In 1927, she received a note from fellow cover artist Norman Rockwell about how much he liked her Post covers. “They are dandy. So full of color and so broadly painted. Believe me I envy you the latter quality particularly,” he wrote, according to Delaware Art Museum’s Illustrating Her World: Ellen B. T. Pyle.

As in many of her 40 covers for the Post, the model is one of Pyle’s children. In this case, teenage daughter Caroline is taking a wheelbarrow break from gardening duties.

“When summer rolled around,” wrote Post editors of this 1946 cover, “and the grass in Westport, Connecticut, began to grow as fast as a small boy’s hair, Stevan Dohanos recalled one of the duties of his youth and how mowing the lawn can ball up a man’s more important engagements.”

The frame house, however, was not in Connecticut, but back in artist Dohanos’ (1907-1994) hometown of Lorain, Ohio. Editors noted that he sketched it a couple years before it appeared on the cover. “Obviously it was a good stage, a good setting, but he never had decided just what story to tell against this background. Now he uses it to tell of a common summertime crisis—when the star pitcher has to work,” Post editors wrote.

Illustrator George Hughes (1907-1990) was an avid outdoorsman, but we’re not sure how he felt about planting trees. He would probably feel the same as the poor guy from the local nursery on this 1955 cover, if he had to deal with an indecisive homeowner.

Hughes painted 115 Post covers, and was especially productive in the 1950s. Typical output for the more popular illustrators was around 40 to 50 covers during a decade. Hughes’ friend Norman Rockwell, for example, did 44 during this period. Hughes did 80 in this timeframe; mostly fun, slice-of-life scenes from midcentury suburban life.

View more in the George Hughes gallery.

Artist Thornton Utz (1914-2000) enjoyed gently bucking the trend and depicting the neighborhood nonconformist. Mr. Leisure in this 1957 cover uses his backyard purely for relaxation, not caring how high the grass gets.

Meanwhile, in nearby yards, neighbors are flummoxed by Mr. Leisure’s indifference—at least those who can spare a second from their suburban chores.

Even the little girl in the middle yard wastes no time as she tends to her dog’s bath. Post editors mused that the cover might start a debate “about whether people should nourish their backyards or let their backyards nourish them.” We’ll let the reader decide.

Moms today may not have to reenact the American Indian Wars with junior in the store aisles, but that doesn’t mean multitasking with a grocery list and an active toddler is any easier than it was 50 years ago.

Popular artist Dick Sargent was a master of what art experts have come to call “sitcom covers.” Editors noted of this 1956 cover that Sargent, just to prove it could be done, borrowed a little boy to fit into a paper bag. “He let the boy’s father do it to assure that he himself would not get scalped.”

Sargent’s adeptness with facial expressions told the story: the mom’s weariness, the shell-shocked look of the grocer, and an expression on the boy’s face that says, “My work is done here.”

“Once upon a time a very small boy stood on the roof of the garage behind his home,” Post editors wrote of 1953′s Learning to Fly (at right). “He had made every reasonable arrangement to fly down. He had carefully studied the aerodynamics of the situation and met them with the most scientific equipment available.”

The cover was a flashback to a Nebraska afternoon when artist John Falter himself was on the roof of his boyhood home, as his own mother agonized below. And the boy, who grew up to recreate the comical events of his childhood for the enjoyment of Post readers everywhere, eventually found his wings.

“What is lovelier than the glow of carefree joy in the faces of happy children?” asked Post editors of this 1952 illustration. “Will the lady on the cover have the heart to defend her food and change those expressions to the pinched melancholy of starvation? She will if she can make it across the room in time.”

Sargent had set the scene for Crashing Mom’s Card Party in his dining room with real pastries, testing the self-restraint of his three sons. “The mouths of those sons began to water,” wrote the editors, “They watered for a week. Two weeks. Three. Then the sons were released at the pastry. They ate it so fast they apparently did not notice it was petrified, claims the fiendish father.”

There is much to be said about good intentions, besides the road to you-know-where being paved with them. Adding to the tension in this piece, an apple waits in the unsuspecting Mom’s path (no doubt left by one of her good-intentioned little helpers).

“My main concern in doing Post covers was trying to do something based on my own experiences,” illustrator John Falter said. “I found my niche as a painter of Americana with an accent on the Middle West. I brought out some of the homeliness and humor of Middle Western town life and home life.”

Like Learning to Fly, this Falter cover is fraught with enough anxiety to make the viewer cringe for Mom (and Dad). While the artist conveys enough despair for us to recognize that the situation is distressing, the overall effect is humorous.

In addition to childhood’s predicaments, Falter depicted a wide range of subjects, including nature’s beauty and intricate bird’s eye views of cities.

Helen Palmquist of Lincolnshire, Illinois, went right for a fun one: “My favorite is the little boy looking in Grandpa’s overcoat, not realizing a puppy is in the other pocket.” Rockwell had his beloved Uncle Gil in mind when he created this 1936 cover. Uncle Gil was something of a scientist and inventor, Rockwell wrote in My Life as an Illustrator. “But he did have one eccentricity, he got his holidays mixed up. On Christmas day, with snow on the ground and a cold wind in the trees, Uncle Gil would arrive loaded with firecrackers to celebrate the Fourth of July. On Easter he would bring us Christmas gifts.

“He always had a kind of Christmas spirit about him—jovial, warmhearted, shouting, ‘Warm, Norman, warm!’ as I approached a hidden present and ‘Hurrah!’ when I found it. … I don’t think I have ever enjoyed any gifts as much as I used to Uncle Gil’s.”

Saying Grace is the favorite of Nicole Beer from our staff in Indianapolis, Indiana. “It reminds me of my grandmother even down to the way Rockwell painted the lady’s hands. I remember being a kid and always praying in public with her before we ate. Everyone would always stare at us and it would make me embarrassed. I hated it as a kid but as an adult, I am so thankful for her and the example she set. I can only hope I am as bold with my faith as she was.”

Saying Grace has an interesting history. Click here to read about which of Rockwell’s sons appears in this illustration and how fellow Post artist George Hughes’ discouragement drove Rockwell to complete this painting.

“There is only one that stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of sheer beauty and deep meaning—The Marriage License,” writes Barbie Thompson of Calgary, Alberta.

“Manning this department, no doubt years before these two lovebirds were even born,” writes Barbie of the elderly clerk, “[he] has seen it all and therefore knows this path all too well—the Good and the Bad, the Happy and Not-So-Happy Endings. The only personal warmth for him now comes from his kitty, those well-smoked cigarettes, and the well-chewed loose tobacco targeted to the spittoon, and the slow-burning, unseen embers from that ancient cast-iron stove.”

Barbie may be more right in that last sentence than she knows. Anne Braman, daughter-in-law of the gentleman who posed as the clerk, wrote in a 1976 Post article that her mother-in law had died the year The Marriage License was painted.

“Mr. Rockwell—knowing my father-in-law Jason C. Braman—realized how upset he was, and he thought if he could get him to model it would give him something new to think about.”

Rockwell was right about the new activity having a therapeutic effect on the widower, wrote Anne, “As soon as the The Marriage License appeared on the cover of the Post, people recognized him immediately. When his friends commented to him about the cover, he would say, ‘Would you like for me to autograph your copy?’ And he would. When I told Mr. Rockwell about this, he was quite amused.”

[Anne Braman modeled for Rockwell as the schoolteacher in the 1956 cover Happy Birthday Mrs. Jones. Read more about her here.]

“I love all baseball covers, but I find this one particularly interesting,” writes Cris Piquinela one of our Post staffers.

“First off, I don’t think most people looking at this cover would think it is a Rockwell. There are no children or people visible, no characteristic facial expressions. However, what I like about this cover is that it forces me to ‘create’ or imagine the scene in my head. I can’t see the person looking through the hole, but I imagine a freckled, redheaded, barefoot kid. At the same time, I can sense the excitement of the pitch, a great hit by the player at bat, and the entire crowd going crazy. This cover does not tell me what I am looking at … it forces me to imagine it. Plus, I love only having a small piece of the image shown to me.”

It is also interesting to note the way Rockwell “carved” his signature in the painting.

Remember to tell us your favorite Post cover for our “Reader Favorites” series. The first “Reader’s Favorite Rockwells” begins next week! Email letters@satevepost.org and include your name, along with the title and date or just a good description of your favorite piece.

Armor

Rockwell visited the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, and came away with an idea for this 1962 Post cover. He recreates the setting with remarkable accuracy, except for two key elements: the guard eating his lunch and the hungry horse eyeballing him were strictly out of Rockwell famous imagination. Proof indeed that an artist’s mind can be a strange place, but it does show Rockwell thinking outside the box (or perhaps, outside the ol’ swimming hole). Additionally, the sumptuous display was an ideal setting for his passion for reproducing intricate details.

The Bridge Game

“I have two radio bridge programs,” wrote a reader from Oregon in 1948, and “ever since the appearance of your May 15th issue, I’ve been swamped with mail asking what I think the redhead with the gardenia should do.” (note: in Letters to Editor July 3, 1948, page 8)

If you think Rockwell was a stickler for details, you should get a bridge player started! Many wrote in to say what the redhead should do, citing percentages and probabilities.

The idea for the painting had been fermenting in the artist’s brain for three years, with Post Art Editor Ken Stuart clipping and sending him bridge cartoons to prod him. Rockwell finally did deal the cards, with the assistance of a bridge expert, and produced this delightful painting done from a most difficult perspective.

Circus Artist

Borrowing the “wild-woman” banner for this carnival scene may not seem a big deal, but having two merry-go-round horses weighing in at 365 pounds each shipped to his Vermont studio was, well, for Rockwell, not that unusual, either. “If a convoy rolled into Arlington, Vermont,” claimed Post editors in this 1947 issue, “bearing a stuffed whale, a cast-iron deer and a grandfather clock,” townsfolk would simply point and say, “Rockwell’s house is up that way.” The artist didn’t let much stop him when it came to props, and indeed, the rest of the world was happy to fall in line. “We came home from church one Sunday and he was closing our front door,” former Rockwell model, Mary Whalen Leonard, recently told us. “He said, ‘Oh, I was hoping you wouldn’t catch me! I was up this morning early and I know I had seen this little picture and I thought it was in your house, so I just wandered around and looked through your cupboards.’” He described it to Mary’s mother who simply said, “Oh no, that’s at Ann Marsh’s.” Rockwell replied, “All right, I’ll go to the Marsh’s,” and bade them good day.

The Connoisseur

Forty-six years after his first Post cover, Rockwell embraced modern art. “I attended some classes in modern art techniques. I learned a lot and loved it.”

And he had fun playing Jackson Pollock for this 1962 cover (the scrawled red “JP” in the upper right is a tribute to Pollock). He put the canvas on the floor, dipping into paints and splashing them far and wide. It happened that a worker was painting the windows of his studio, and the artist invited him to help. The man climbed to the top of a ladder and obligingly dumped a can of white paint on the canvas below. One can’t help but wonder whatever happened to the laborer who actually helped Norman Rockwell paint a Post cover! As for whatever happened to the original “Rockwell-Pollock,” it is in the private collection of a gentleman named Steven Spielberg.

The Post has a larger-than-life version of Rockwell’s The Connoisseur in our Indianapolis headquarters. Check it out here.

Shoveling Floral Shop Sidewalk

“It was cold in New York,” Post editors say of this John Falter (1910-1982) cover, “and the cagey artist did most of his investigating behind glass, riding up and down on a Madison Avenue bus.” Painting the scene, Falter figured the frozen-faced workers would get an ironic chuckle from the fact that inside the flower shop window it is spring. Or perhaps not. Editors also had to note that Falter delivered his picture to the Post “just before the first of the winter’s oversize snowstorms hit New York. Then the artist hauled out for Arizona, where you may enjoy scenes like this in comfort.”

Springtime, 1935 Boy with Bunny

“You can’t buy a straw hat and make it look old by rubbing dirt in it,” Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) wrote in My Adventures as an Illustrator. “A hat has to be worn in the sun and sweated in and sat on and rained on. Then it’ll be old. And look it.” In 1935 Rockwell was asked to illustrate Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and he took the costuming very seriously. Desperately needing the right hat for Huck, he found just the thing in, appropriately, Hannibal, Missouri, Twain’s hometown. He spotted “a man walking along the road wearing a straw hat in a beautiful state of decay” and managed to buy it from him. Before long he ended up with a carload of clothes, “all old and rotten, battered, tattered, and splotched.”

Folks around Hannibal no doubt talked for a long time about that crazy guy who paid good money for their old duds, but the book illustrations were done to everyone’s satisfaction. And, like the boy greeting spring (left) with his worn hat and raggedy pants, some Post covers reflected the “Huck Finn look.”

Reading Among the Blossoms

Despite the fact that F. Sands Brunner (1886-1954) was very much a rugged outdoorsman who enjoyed camping, canoeing, and mountain climbing, most of his paintings reflect domesticity with adorable children and lovely women. This 1936 work from Post sister publication Country Gentleman is a case in point. The rich color and skillful use of lighting are typical of Brunner’s work. The Boyertown, Pennsylvania, native painted three Country Gentleman and two Post covers.

Appalachian Rhododendrons

Nature took over on a grand scale in most of John Clymer’s (1907-1989) 80 Post covers, and people were secondary. In fact, the viewer almost has to squint to see the family consisting of Dad with baby on his back, Mom in straw hat, and daughter leading them along the trail to Craggy Pinnacle near Asheville, North Carolina. Clymer told Post editors, “Sections of the trail wind through 10-foot-high rhododendrons, and the ground is carpeted with the rich pink petals of the flowers that have fallen.”

“These floriferous slopes look their best in mid-June,” editors noted in 1961, “as they did when the Catawba and the Cherokee held sway in the Carolinas. But if the scenery of the area has not changed much, the people have. What self-respecting Indian brave would have toted a papoose on his back?”

Hardware Store at Springtime

Artist Stevan Dohanos (1907-1994) loved hardware stores, and editors informed us that “the store he has painted affectionately for this week’s cover is a composite of many where Dohanos himself has obeyed the impulse, very strong in the spring, to buy a lot of new garden tools.” They warned, however, “this equipment buying is by all odds the most popular phase of gardening, for on a bland spring day there is nothing like the feel of a good rake or hoe in your hand—in the hardware store.”

Ready to Garden

This gentleman has made his trip to the hardware store and is hauling those spring purchases, lawn mower and all, back by public transportation. Perhaps more surprising is that the illustration is by the great J.C. Leyendecker, the man responsible for those chiseled Arrow Collar men who “haunted several generations of less fortunate-mankind,” according to David Rowland in a 1973 issue of the Post. In Leyendecker’s 40-plus years with The Saturday Evening Post, he showed amazing versatility as an illustrator, depicting subjects varying from elegant to comical in more than 300 covers.