Norman Rockwell (66 page)

“If I were starting”  NR, quoted in Selwa Roosevelt, “Rockwell Exhibit Draws Hundreds,”
Evening Star,
June 17, 1955, B1.

27: In for the Long Haul

“what people ‘are’ ”  S. B. Sutton,
Crossroads in Psychiatry: A History of the McLean Hospital,
261, 263.

Although various media dramatizations  Several well-informed reports have been published on ECT, including Daniel Smith’s accessible and thoughtful “Shock and Disbelief,”
Atlantic Monthly,
Feb. 2001, 79–90; institutional accounts available from McLean Hospital, Hartford Institute for Living, and the National Institutes for Mental Health, as well as medical journals, including the 1993 volume of the
New England Journal of Medicine,
also provide helpful summaries of ECT. Personal accounts of treatments also exist, such as William Styron’s
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
(New York, 1990).

“psychiatry’s job”  Smith, “Shock and Disbelief,” 81.

And even when it is not  Ibid., 86.

“But oh how I miss”  NR letter to Nancy Barstow (Wynkoop), July 12, 1955.

“on the side of the angels”  Cinny Rockwell interview, June 2000.

“my darling Tom”  MR letter to TR, July 14–28, 1955.

Reflecting on his father’s indiscriminate  PR talk to the National Press Club, June 2000.

“Why Hartford?”  Peter Sudarsky, “Rockwell ‘Limbers Up’ by Sketching City Scenes,”
Hartford Courant,
Sept. 4, 1955.

Erik Erikson noticed  Erik Erikson letter to NR, n.d. but fall 1955.

several other illustrators  Fred Taraba interview, Jan. 2000.

“A woman’s life”  MR letter to Nancy Wynkoop, May 25, 1957.

“For a few days”  TR interview, March 14, 2001.

“You have to say something”  NR audiotape, May 1959.

“I don’t want”  NR audiotape, May 18, 1959.

“deep moments”  Arthur Danto letter to author, Dec. 1999.

“[The] myth of comforting superficiality”  Michele Bogart, 76.

“I’ve been down . . . doesn’t work”  NR audiotape, June 1959.

“Good night, children”  NR audiotape, June 26, 1959.

“I’m late today”  NR audiotape, May 25, 1959.

“They seemed to be”  JR interview, Aug. 1999.

“I could not write”  Margaret Brenman Gibson letter to NR, Sept. 8, 1959.

28: Picking Up the Pieces

“We all loved Mary”  NR letter to Peggy Best, Sept. 4, 1959.

“ironic self-consciousness”  John Updike,
Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism,
724.

“prophet of mindlessness”  Benjamin DeMott, “When We Were Young and Poor,”
The Nation,
Apr. 2, 1960, 299.

“you have to be”  NR, “A Closeup Visit with Norman Rockwell,” Mary Anne Guitar,
Design,
Sept./Oct. 1960.

“Dear Peggy”  NR letter to Peggy Best, June 16, 1960.

“She hoped to marry him”  Jonathan Best interview, Nov. 2000.

“Some of the other teachers”  Shelley Getchell interview, Oct. 1999.

“cold and hard”  Susan Merrill interview, Sept. 5, 2000.

“After she had retired”  David Wood interview, Sept. 2, 2000.

“Why are we all”  This account was recited to me by at least three of the couple’s friends.

“I know it isn’t correct”  NR letter to Ida Hill Cahn, Oct. 18, 1960.

29: Another Schoolteacher

“You work too hard”  NR letter to Peggy Best, Jan. 10, 1961.

“I got your letter”  Ibid.

“Got your bright letter”  NR letter to Peggy Best, Jan. 13, 1961.

“You’re greatly missed”  NR letter to Peggy Best, Aug. 22, 1961.

“Since we are such”  NR letter to Peggy Best, n.d. but Sept. 1961.

“I didn’t see how”  Virginia Loveless interview, Sept. 2000.

“those of us”  Lyn Austin interview, August 23, 2000.

“Norman was incapable”  Bud Edgerton interview Sept. 2000.

“There was a tiny bit”  Virginia Loveless interview, Sept. 2000.

“Everyone else was supposed”  PR interview, Mar. 2000.

“Everyone else would be louder”  Daisy Rockwell interview, Mar. 2000.

“old codger”  Jan Cohn discusses Robinson’s motif in
Covers of the Saturday Evening Post
(New York, 1998), 47.

As the cultural historian Wanda Korn explains  Wanda Korn, “Ways of Seeing,” in Maureen Hart-Hennessey and Anne Knutson, eds.
Pictures for an American People,
90.

Le Connoisseur
  Ibid., 89.

One of the three printed letters  Ibid., 85, taken from the letters to the editor in the February 17, 1962, edition of the
Post.

“Often Pop would tell me”  PR interview, Apr. 1999.

It expanded its foreign coverage  John Tebbel,
George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post,
234–35.

“a remarkable cranium”  NR quoted in Ed Wilcox, “Rockwell’s America: It’s Gone,”
Chicago Tribune,
Aug. 2, 1970, 1.

“If only”  
MAI,
424.

“the American Nazi leader”  
New York Times,
Feb. 24, 1965.

“Thrilled but”  NR, calendar, Jan. 11, 1965.

“all excited”  Ibid., Jan. 29, 1965.

“Big Day”  Ibid., Feb. 4, 1965.

“JERRY HELPED”  Ibid., Feb. 26, 1965.

“quite a change”  Ibid., April 29, 1965.

“tried making”  Ibid., April 1, 1965.

Reaction among Rockwell’s admirers  Linda Pero, “Three Rockwell Photographers,” NR Museum, Stockbridge, April–June. ’95.

“subject matter, composition”  Dugald Stermer letter to NR, Aug. 25, 1965.

“As you expressed”  NR letter to Dugald Stermer, Aug. 29, 1965.

“The proposal”  “The One Hundred Best People in the World,”
Esquire,
August 1965, 35–36.

30: A Rockwell Revival

“Give me contract”  NR calendar, Aug. 24, 1966.

A letter  Allen Hurlburt letter to NR, June 18, 1965.

“creative art direction”  NR letter to Allen Hurlburt, Mar. 1, 1966.

“spurred on”  Susan Merrill interview, Sept. 5, 2000.

“homemade wedding”  Ibid.

“anyone can pass”  Bradford Hertzog interview, Aug. 2000.

How much his wife’s politics  Linda Pero, “In Celebrated Company,” NR Museum exhibition, Stockbridge, Mass., June 1997.

Henri Matisse  John Russell,
Matisse: Father and Son,
362.

“I had to really shake”  PR interview, June 2000.

“It is no Rembrandt”  NR letter to Allen Hurlburt, Nov. 26, 1968.

“I want to show”  “Painter Andrew Wyeth,”
Time,
Dec. 27, 1963, 52.

Christopher Niebuhr remembers from a story  Christopher Niebuhr interview, Aug. 4, 2000.

“A picture without a frame”  NR quoted in
The Christian Science Monitor,
Nov. 21, 1970.

Yet he had cannily invited  Rita Reif, “Norman Rockwell’s Home and Props,”
International Herald Tribune,
Jan. 5, 1970.

“We should have great confidence”  NR, quoted in Ed Wilcox, “Rockwell’s America: It’s Gone,”
Chicago Tribune,
Aug. 2, 1970, 1.

“no longer”  Ibid.

“I’m no artist”  NR, quoted in Phil Casey, “Norman Rockwell Claims He’s Not an Artist,”
Sunday Oregonian,
Nov. 22, 1970.

“from exhaustion to exhaustion”  Robert Taylor, “Norman Rockwell and the Spirit of ’76,”
Boston Sunday Globe,
Jan. 3, 1971, 3.

“The townspeople worried”  Mary Quinn interview, Sept. 2000.

31: The Light Recedes

“I am very sorry”  NR letter to correctional institution inmate, Aug. 24, 1971.

“I was just”  Robert Coles interview, Nov. 2000.

“The reason I am writing”  NR letter to Robert Coles, Oct. 12, 1968.

at the end of November  NR letter to John Mack Carter, Nov. 29, 1971.

“fading fast”  NR calendar, Jan. 18, 1972.

“It was a pleasure to shoulder”  John Canaday, “Rockwell Retrospective in Brooklyn,”
New York Times,
Mar. 23, 1972.

“I remember”  Susan Merrill interview, Sept. 2000.

“fine arts man”  NR, “Faces Behind the Figures,”
Forbes,
June 1, 1972, 50.

illustration’s place in American culture  Stuart Little, “Are Illustrators Obsolete?”
Saturday Review,
July 10, 1971, 44.

“Jarvis died”  NR calendar, May 9, 1973.

“Even that year”  Virginia Loveless interview, Apr. 1999.

“splurge” and “dear”  Mary Quinn interview, Sept. 2000.

“no”  Brad and Kay Hertzog interview, Sept. 28, 2000.

“had a hell of a time”  NR quoted in
People,
Feb. 23, 1976, 43.

“They would be pleasant”  Virginia Loveless interview, Mar. 2000.

32: Rage Against Impotence

“I tried to reassure her”  Mary Quinn interview, Mar. 2000.

“We all got so worried”  Virginia Loveless interview, Mar. 2000.

“the help”  Ibid.

“it made no sense”  NR, quoted in Phil Casey, “Norman Rockwell Claims He’s Not an Artist,”
Sunday Oregonian,
Nov. 22, 1970.

“I always liked watching Jarvis”  Mary Quinn interview, Mar. 2000.

“They were so close”  Virginia Loveless and Mary Quinn interview, Sept. 2000.

“prejudices”  NR, quoted in Lena Tabori Fried, “At Home with the Rockwells,”
Good Housekeeping,
217.

at least one major scholar  The scholar is David Perkins,
English Romantic Writers,
707.

“the world pays tribute”  David Wood, remarks, St. Paul’s Church funeral service for NR, Nov. 11, 1978.

Illustration Credits

The author gratefully acknowledges the copyright permissions for art reproductions granted by the Norman Rockwell Family Trust and General Electric, and the loan of photographs by the Norman Rockwell Museum, Jarvis Rockwell, Thomas Rockwell, Peter Rockwell, Sally Hill Cooper, Mary Amy Orpen Cross, Judy Goffman Cutler, Virginia Loveless, and Richard Rockwell.

Illustrations copyright © 2001 The Norman Rockwell Family Trust, reproduced by permission of the Trust; photos courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts:
The End of the Road, Vinegar Bill, The Quarry Troop Life Guards, The Lucky Seventh, Boy with Baby Carriage, Checkers, Ichabod Crane, The First 4th, Bridge Game, Willie Gillis in Church, The Meeting, Freedom to Worship, Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Fear, Freedom from Want, Art Critic, Breaking Home Ties, Saying Grace, The Problem We All Live With, Murder in Mississippi, Triple Self-Portrait.

Photos courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts:
Peach Crop;
NR and his brother Jarvis (“Jerry”), 1895; Jerry and NR catching frogs; NR, Jerry, Waring, and Nancy; summer boardinghouse, c. 1899; family portrait, December 1911; NR and buddies in the Navy, 1918; NR at work outside his New Rochelle studio, 1921; NR in his studio, 1922; NR painting
Let’s Give Him Enough and On Time;
Jack Atherton critiquing NR.

Illustrations copyright © 2001 The Norman Rockwell Family Trust, reproduced by permission of the Trust; photos courtesy of Judy Goffman Cutler:
Love Ouanga, Strictly a Sharpshooter, The Connoisseur.

Illustration copyright © 2001 The Norman Rockwell Family Trust, reproduced by permission of the Trust; photo courtesy of the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts:
Shuffleton’s Barbershop.

Photo by Gene Pelham, courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts: NR and Jarvis the model.

Photos by Bill Scovill, courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts: Main Street, Stockbridge; NR and Mary (“Molly”) Punderson at their wedding; NR, Molly, and Doug McGregor biking.

Photos by Louie Lamone, courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts: NR at work after Mary’s death; NR and his faux Pollock.

Photo courtesy of the Art Students’ League, New York City: NR’s scholarship drawing.

Copyright © General Electric; photo courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts:
And the Symbol of Welcome Is Light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laura Claridge is the author of a biography of another twentieth-century painter,
Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence,
as well as a book on British Romantic poetry,
Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire.
She is also the co-editor of
Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism,
a collection of essays. A popular international lecturer, she was professor of English literature at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, for eleven years. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.