Joy to the Word
Norman Rockwell
December 6, 1930
Get this framed at Art.com

Returning home to New York from the Philadelphia offices of The Saturday Evening Post in 1930, Norman Rockwell was a happy man. Editor George Horace Lorimer had OK’d the artist’s sketch for the December 6, 1930, Christmas cover.

Lorimer’s initials “GHL” gave the artist the green light to assemble models and start the painting as soon as he arrived back in his studio. The illustration was to feature the word “Christmas” below two 16th-century guards breaking protocol by dancing in the snow while observing indoor festivities at a roadside inn.

But as Norman positioned props and began the project, he noticed that his two models—Walter Botts and Rockwell’s ex-brother-in-law and close friend, Howard O’Connor—weren’t enthused about the idea. Truth be told, Rockwell’s own passion for the project was also waning.

With the Great Depression now in its 10th month, American citizens were struggling. The revelry in the proposed scene seemed wrong. Rockwell decided to change the idea, and he invited his models and his wife Mary to speak up. Mary underscored how inspirational her husband’s covers were to American families all across the country, how it was his responsibility to lift them up in hard times. Then Walter chimed in with the story of his parents’ hospitality. They were innkeepers in Sullivan, Indiana, providing shelter and food to homeless job-seekers.

That story triggered an idea. Walter would pose as this lone, cold, 16th-century guard standing outside a roadside inn, peering through a depressed arch window at those celebrating the Christmas season. The focus shifted perspective from the haves to the have-nots. When the message reached Lorimer, he quickly approved the change.

Editor’s note: We’ve gathered 114 spectacular Christmas illustrations by Rockwell and other beloved artists from The Saturday Evening Post in a special 128-page holiday edition of the magazine on sale now!

Room at the Inn The Saturday Evening Post

Signpainter
Norman Rockwell
February 9, 1935
Click this image to order a print from Art.com.

“The story of my life is really the story of my pictures and how I made them,” Norman Rockwell frequently said. “In one way or another, everything I have seen or done has gone into my pictures.”

Some of his ideas gestated for years, but this February 9, 1935, Post cover (right) sprang to life quickly, inspired by a surprising turn of events that had occurred the previous November.

On that day, Norman’s second wife Mary and their friend Bud Cunningham (an out-of-work commercial artist and part-time handyman) had dropped by Norman’s studio in New Rochelle, New York. The artist was explaining that his assignment was to showcase the automobile’s influence on advertising.

But just as Norman was saying this, the door swung open and Howard O’Connor, Norman’s ex-brother-in-law, burst in. He had sad news: His sister Irene (Norman’s first wife) had died unexpectedly.

Only after delivering the news did Howard notice the others. He was embarrassed about barging in and apologized for interrupting. After an awkward silence, the ever-gracious Mary broke the ice: “What if the cover was a billboard advertisement with Bud as a sign painter, painting a portrait of a pretty woman’s face—a likeness and tribute to Irene?”

Norman kissed her, then picked up his pad and sketched her idea out on the spot. At the bottom of the sketch, Norman penciled in the word “kiss.”

“A Valentine kiss?” asked Howard.

“Yes, for my Mary,” replied the artist.

Visit Art.com for this and other classic Rockwell prints.

Valentine Kiss The Saturday Evening Post

"Autumn Stroll" by Norman Rockwell.

Norman Rockwell was a child of the city, raised in the mean streets of Manhattan in the late 1800s. As a New Yorker, he idealized certain aspects of country life as only a city slicker can. The man and his dog taking a stroll in the fresh air was little more than a dream at the time this cover was created.

The idea for the painting actually originated with the model, Walter Botts, whom Norman and his new wife Mary met in 1930 in New York as the artist was introducing her to his circle of friends. Walter and Mary hit it off when they discovered that they were both from the Midwest. Walter was describing his hometown and spoke fondly of his Hoosier roots and his love of wandering the countryside of south central Indiana as a kid.

Nothing came of the meeting right away, but the idealized vision of a bracing walk in the country had lodged in the artist’s mind. Five years later, Norman, Mary, and their two sons Jerry and Tommy (third son Peter was born in 1936), left New York to vacation at Mary’s family home in southern California. This was to be a working vacation for the artist, who visited Hollywood to do a radio show and made a point of seeing a string of potential models. As luck would have it, one of the models was Walter, now living in Los Angeles.

Was it fate that brought the two men together again? Norman had already made a preliminary sketch of the man-with-a-dog scene Walter had described five years earlier, but he’d done so using a different model. It was Mary who suggested Norman redo the illustration using Walter. After all, she pointed out, it was Walter who had been the original inspiration for the idea.

Norman always loved this painting for its reflection of the country life he aspired to. Sure enough, three years after completing the work, he and his family would relocate from the New York suburbs to southern Vermont. The dream became a reality.

As an interesting footnote, in 1938, model Walter’s face became familiar to millions as Uncle Sam in the World War II recruiting posters entitled, “I Want You.” Artist James Montgomery Flagg chose the model because he had “the longest arms, the longest nose, and the bushiest eyebrows,” according to James’ widow’s memoir. As the story goes, when James asked Walter what he was going to do with those long arms, the model suggested the persuasive pointing gesture. And the rest, as they say, is history.

To order a print, visit saturdayeveningpost.com/autumn-stroll.

A Dream Come True The Saturday Evening Post

The real issue Rockwell was subtly illustrating was not deadline pressure, but the challenges of parenting. Notice anything wrong with the scene? Look closely around the artist’s feet. His brush handles are lying in clumps of paint, his sketches are underfoot, his empty matchbook is on the floor behind him, and his maulstick (used to support the hand while painting) is beneath the chair and out of reach. No wonder one wing of his collar appears to be about to take flight! Why were his tools in disarray? He had three sons under the age of 8, that’s why.

Norman turned to his wife, Mary, for guidance. Should he ban them from his studio? Mary, a former schoolteacher, said no. Instead, she suggested teaching the boys a lesson in responsibility using that old standby, flashcards. She asked Norman to draw his art instruments positioned in their correct places in the studio. Norman would use the flashcards to teach the boys to be more responsible with his equipment.

Although not a permanent solution, this gentle intervention was a step in the right direction, turning what had been an ongoing annoyance into a fun activity for the painter and his sons. Ultimately Rockwell commemorated the lesson by painting the “before” scenario shown here, in which the artist is unable to work in a studio that had been torn asunder by three small boys.

To order a print, click here.

More Than Meets the Eye The Saturday Evening Post

Until then, Walker’s only claim to fame was being cousin to Bobby “Wheezer” Hutchins of the Our Gang series. Walker, born Alice Norberg, grew up in the small fishing village of Petersburg, Alaska, then ran off to Hollywood at 14, first changing her name to Alice Doll.

She sang and danced in vaudeville shows, modeled shoes, and even worked with chimpanzees. She soon found a niche, of sorts; she was a good singer who could hit the high notes, so, as the talkies emerged, she became a stand-in “screamer” in horror films for better-known actresses who needed to spare their voices. Her specialty was not to last: Producers soon realized that they could save recorded screams and dub them in later.

It was around this time that she changed her name once again to Terry Walker and was chosen by Norman Rockwell for this March 9, 1935, Post cover featuring a milkman pointing out the time to a couple that has clearly had a long night out.

When the issue hit the newsstands, the unknown actress miraculously transformed from a nobody to an “it” girl in Hollywood. Trouble was, she didn’t know it. Paramount executives frantically contacted Rockwell, but, unfortunately, the address he had for her was no longer current (and Google didn’t yet exist!). Studio officials traveled to Alaska, back to Hollywood, then to New York City, and finally to Miami Beach, where they eventually found her singing with the Jan Rubini Orchestra at the Royal Palm Hotel.

It had taken 11 months to find her! But such are the nature of “overnight sensations” in Hollywood, even today. In fact, if you add it all up, it was a full 19 years from the day she left Alaska that Walker emerged as a Paramount star. She would go on to make 16 movies, including several starring roles. Her last picture was the 1944 Voodoo Man with Bela Lugosi.

Overnight Sensation The Saturday Evening Post

As it happens, Rockwell was vacationing in the hamlet of Louisville Landing, New York. While out for a stroll, he noticed his neighbor’s granddaughter Elizabeth painting a landscape of the surrounding farm. Rockwell walked over to take a look, but when Elizabeth saw him coming she recognized the famous illustrator in his trademark white bellbottom pants and holding his signature pipe. The chance encounter with celebrity was too much for the young woman, who fled in embarrassment rather than have her labors exposed—and possibly critiqued. She picked up her artwork and supplies and “high-tailed it out of there,” as she would say years later.

Rockwell was sorry about frightening her, but a conversation with her father about his shy, artistically inclined daughter cleared the air. The conversation also afforded Rockwell an opportunity to ask permission to paint Elizabeth for a Post cover.

Although bashful, Elizabeth knew how impressed her friends would be seeing her on the cover of the most popular magazine in the country. So, overcoming her hesitation, she agreed to meet with Rockwell.

The next day Elizabeth stood nervously in front of Rockwell’s cottage. Suddenly he opened the door, startling the faint-hearted girl who once again turned and bolted from his front yard. The painting of the painter was not to be!

Disappointed, Rockwell never forgot about the touching scene. Ten years later in southern California his vision finally came to fruition when he painted his new fiancée’s neighbor and cousin, Rosemary, as the shy artist from Louisville Landing running with a painting of her grandfather’s field.

This story is dedicated to Elizabeth, the original inspiration for “Wet Paint,” the cover shown here. She very graciously shared her memories of Rockwell with me a couple of decades ago. Elizabeth passed away in July of 2010 at the age of 101.

Escape Artist The Saturday Evening Post

After the festivities, the family gathered at their summer camp a few miles away in Louisville Landing. Relaxing on the shoreline of the St. Lawrence River, conversations led to predictions about the future decade.

A spirited discussion followed, but soon Rockwell’s brother-in-law, Howard, and Irene’s father grew restless and invited Rockwell to walk with them. The three men eventually ended up at the town’s small dance hall, watching out-of-towners dance to the latest hits. As fascinating as the dancers were, several couples ringing the perimeter of the dance floor—sitting face-to-face, knee-to-knee and moving small heart-shaped objects (planchettes) on Ouija boards—were even more intriguing to Rockwell. Recalling their earlier conversation, the artist joked to Howard, “Maybe they can predict what the ’20s will bring.”

Nothing more was said about the matter, but six months later on February 3, 1920, Howard visited Rockwell in his New Rochelle studio to wish him happy birthday. Walking over to a couple of paintings resting on easels, he commented to Rockwell, “This looks like one of the couples using the Ouija board last summer.”

In fact, it was. The previous summer’s weekend celebration in Potsdam inspired the illustration “Ouija Board” featured on the May 1, 1920, cover of The Saturday Evening Post (above). Norman thought it was a trendy cover, perfect for the new decade, and used New York City models Betty Keough and Henry Von Bousen in the illustration.

Another canvas nearby featured a young couple looking at blueprints of a new house with a small child beside them. Howard asked, “Will this be the Rockwell family someday?”

“I don’t know,” the artist replied. “Do you have a Ouija board?”

Ouija Does It The Saturday Evening Post

By the 1920s, Norman Rockwell was a major star. And, like many other public figures before and since, he relished nothing more than the opportunity to get away from it all. He needed to escape the shackles of celebrity to stimulate his creative juices.

He found that freedom at Gibson’s Point at Louisville Landing—a town in upstate New York along the St. Lawrence River. It was a sleepy town with not much going for it aside from a small dance hall and the ferry dock where passengers boarded for the short voyage across the border to Canada.

Summering at Gibson’s Point, Rockwell shed his big-city background and fame. He retrieved drinking water from stone wells, carried firewood, and swam and fished in the river. It made him feel like a character in one of his illustrations. “This place is like a series of living Post covers—and I’m in it,” he told a young man who also visited there.

More than anything else, he enjoyed being treated like one of the local boys who sat on the porch of the general store in the evenings, listening to their elders expound on the comings and goings of the ferry. The stories told by these hard-working, honest men ignited ideas that later blossomed into Post covers. One of the themes that emerged was a return to innocence, as if the very process of quietly observing the elders of the town transported Rockwell back to his youth. It was while sitting on that porch that Rockwell was inspired to create the December 3, 1927, Post cover (pictured) celebrating the kid in all of us. The benevolent Santa is modeled on John Malone, a father figure to Rockwell and his host at Gibson’s Point.

How Norman Rockwell Escaped His Celebrity The Saturday Evening Post

After vacationing in Europe, Rockwell and his wife, Irene, were sailing home to New York along with their close friends, Fred and Edna Peck. While on board, Fred revealed some shocking news to Rockwell: He informed him that Irene wanted a new life with someone else—Fred’s own brother-in-law. Awkward!
A few days after arriving home, Rockwell retreated to the sanctuary of his studio and his work. However, once inside, he found it difficult to do anything but stand and stare, let alone be creative. After a week of producing very little, he sought counsel from his old friend Van Brunt. A veteran of two wars and 45 years Rockwell’s senior, Van Brunt was no stranger to grief; six years earlier, he had lost his wife of 52 years. As it turned out, Van Brunt’s advice was sound. He ordered Rockwell back to the studio: “Get to your easel and paint; it will all work out in the end!”

Rockwell not only took his “medicine,” he made Van Brunt his model. He knew that his friend was musically inclined, active in the community chorus and Boy Scouts, and had served as a drummer boy during the Civil War. Thus was born our Post cover illustration featuring the older musician pondering new beginnings. Notice the poignant sheet music titles clearly on display around him.

Rockwell incorporated another hidden message in the illustration—he was good at that. Look closely at the hatband and see if you can decipher the meaning of the three stylized letters so appropriate to the artist’s predicament.

[Give up? The letters are “WOU”—With Out You.]

Less than six months after the painting was published, Rockwell married a schoolteacher named Mary Barstow with whom he had three sons—Jarvis, Thomas, and Peter.

Starting Over The Saturday Evening Post