Norman Rockwell Read Online Free Page A

Society; New York Public Library (research librarians); New York Academy of Medicine, Historical Collections; Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles; Parrish Art Museum; Potsdam Public Museum;
The Saturday Evening Post
(Curtis Publishing archives); St. John’s Episcopal Church, Yonkers; St. John’s–Wilmot Episcopal Church, New Rochelle; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Yonkers; University of Iowa Libraries; University of South Florida Library; United States Department of Justice; United States Naval Academy, Annapolis; Village of Norwood (New York); Westchester County Surrogate’s Court; Westchester Historical Society; Yonkers Public Library; Yonkers Historical Society.
    During the gestation of a book, amid the clamor of the new, the solace of a few old friends proves vital. For
Norman Rockwell,
I reached out to three people who have traveled my path long enough to teach me much about loyalty, love, and generosity of spirit: Suzanne Ford, Lorraine Miller, and Abbas Raza.
    Finally, with that turn toward the inevitable that every writer anticipates as the journey’s reward, I thank my family. My parents and parents-in-law, to whom I dedicate this book, for their nurturance and faith; my sister and sister-in-law and loving brothers these women have given me, Marybeth and Steve and Anita and Tommy, for their unwavering support. To another brother, Michael, and to Donna and Shane for opening their hearts to me about complicated, shared family. And to my children, Devon and Colin, whose never-failing patience, pride, and encouragement have urged me on when I was awfully tired; to Geof Oppenheimer, whose sanction from the art world proper reassured me. Even with all that support, however, it has been Ian Claridge, my philosopher-son from his earliest years, who has physically and mentally boosted this project most: his incisive queries, his imaginative ruminations, his bibliographic references, his balanced critique—all have invigorated the quality of my own thought. It is a particularly deep pleasure to get such nourishment back from one’s child.
    My husband, Dennis Oppenheimer, first suggested this book, and he has quietly, steadfastly, pragmatically shored me up throughout its birth. If I have been guilty at moments of entering into the Rockwellian vignette too hopefully, his is the blame: he has made our home as near an ideal as I ever imagined possible. This book salutes him, as husband, father, and man.

Part I
    NEW YORK

1
    Narrative Connections, the Heart of an Illustrator
    We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
    —Joan Didion,
The White Album
    Norman Rockwell was not sadistic. He was, however, expert at creating desire, both in his public and in his private life. His family, who too often felt themselves to be “living out the cover of a
Saturday Evening Post,
” as his oldest son, Jarvis, once expressed it, were routinely seduced by his invitations of intimacy, though the artist established a subtle but impermeable distance when they tried to respond. His real sensitivity was reserved for his art, his empathy lavished on his easel, day after day, for over six decades. As do many artists, he tended to exorcise his internal tensions in his paintings, so that the energy that might have been expended on the work of rearing three sons born within six years of each other exploded into the narrative stories on his canvas instead. In the summer of 1954, for instance, at the height of his powers, Rockwell undertook a
Saturday Evening Post
cover of an aspiring artist studying master works in a museum,
The Art Critic,
published on April 16, 1955. The cover shows a young man scrutinizing a woman’s décolletage in the head-and-shoulders portrait in front of him, while on the adjacent wall, prosperous Dutch burghers in an Old Master painting appear to start with indignation and amusement as they watch the impudent student. The model for the student was Rockwell’s son Jarvis (named after the illustrator’s father); for the