Shuffleton’s owes a particular debt to the qualities Rockwell explained many years later most impressed him in Vermeer: his “eye for meticulously rendered, palpable surface detail,” which appealed to him as a like painter of “practical temperament.” Even Vermeer’s faults—his temptation (though usually controlled) to overload his canvas with details—could be Rockwell’s own. And Vermeer also employed photography as an aid, as the supplement that Rockwell always claimed it to be. Although historians waffle on Vermeer’s use of a camera obscura, convincing evidence suggests that he used the device to perfect his perspective and to help him capture light more precisely. Like Rockwell, he was an inveterate reviser, a perfectionist. Unlike Rockwell, however, he worked at a leisurely pace, producing two or three paintings a year to other Dutch artists’ norm of forty or fifty.
Genre painting in general seemed to sharp-eyed and knowledgeable viewers in the mid-fifties to underlie the illustrator’s own work: a prominent New York collector explained that he had begun collecting Rockwells because the painter was “20th century genre painting. I don’t know anyone else who’s specialized in American genre. Maybe photography killed it off, but, in my estimation, when posterity looks back on the art of the 20th century, Norman Rockwell will occupy a singular place.”
That any collector retained the independence in 1950 to value Rockwell or genre painting in general is impressive, in light of the large-scale conversion of American art to the principles that had been decreed in 1939 by the modernist art critic Clement Greenberg. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Greenberg’s watershed essay, laid down the laws of good art for decades to come, and such art definitely excluded picture painting. Greenberg’s thesis depended on the subordination of illusion and storytelling to an emphasis on the process as the end product. Painting that called attention to itself became the coin of the realm, the graphic arts counterpart to a tenet of literary modernism by now decades old. This philosophy, transferred to the visual arts, took hold with painters quickly, but the educated and upper-class audiences and buyers of fine art required more time before letting go of the familiar. By 1950, however, as Tom Wolfe has remarked, even those who fashionably held to the lack of distinction between fine art and illustration preached that the purpose of art was “to present, not to represent,” a dictum that usually elevated geometric shapes and abstract modes.
If we believe the later pronouncements of his psychoanalyst, the redoubtable Erik Erikson, Rockwell’s brilliance with Shuffleton’s Barbershop, and the flowering of his realistic work of the fifties, flowed freely out of his unhappiness, not from any respite in the drama of his home life. According to Erikson, Rockwell painted his happiness, as he put it, rather than living it. In early 1950, he was deeply worried, yet he had the advantage of Mary’s physical proximity, intermittently and, he assumed, permanently. And Jarvis, reassuringly, was next door in his twin studio. Rockwell was anxious yet secure, worried but motivated.
Larger cultural changes threatened his landscape as well: the challenge to illustration that had hummed under the surface since the war’s end, from the rise of television to the prominence of color photography, was gaining momentum. Rockwell couldn’t know yet that the 1940s had been the last major decade for the illustrator, but his ear was too keenly tuned to his society’s beat not to register the signs all around him. Most ominously, the Post Christmas covers had gone to George Hughes and to Constantin Alajalov, an illustrator of the stylish cartoon more typical of The New Yorker than the Post. An age of consumerism had begun in the prosperity following the war, and a new cover ethos that reflected suburban emphasis on the modern good life was aging Rockwell’s storytelling quickly. If he could give up the onus of reinventing the Golden Age of Illustration, he could just let himself paint.
By the end of the 1940s, an emergent aesthetic in illustration showed that Modernism had finally had a serious impact on this mostly commercial art form. Instead of the strict adherence to narrative realism, new schools of talented illustrators, as Steven Heller points out, included artists who had assimilated the lessons of abstraction, such as Robert Osborn, Robert Weaver, Robert Andrew Parker, Tom Allen, and Phil Hayes, all of whom were more influenced by the paintings of Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning than the traditional forces behind Rockwell’s work. But Rockwell painted his happiness by relying on the lessons of mastery he had spent decades perfecting, and now, when he was experiencing severe personal anguish, he had no desire to change course. Just as Robert Frost derived “a certain strength and stability from reliance on form,” writing to The Amherst Student that “anyone who has achieved the least form to be sure of it, is lost to the larger excruciations. I think it must stroke faith the right way,” so did Rockwell lean on his similar aesthetic sensibility. Even if Rockwell had the ability to switch gears at this stage in his career—which he might have—he pursued the opposite tack: perfection of his form. From Shuffleton’s Barbershop and Solitaire, both painted in 1950, onward, the decade would see him produce painting after painting, each of which staked a claim for inclusion in histories of American realism.
Tellingly, however, the write-ups that the Post provided on their artists continued to explicate Rockwell’s painting as cloyingly old-fashioned, even empty-headed stories of an Arcadia populated by a few real people whom the artist personally knew. “In this delightful setting [a local barbershop], Norman Rockwell is relieved periodically of surplus hair. Beyond the charming still life, in the room where life is less still, sits barber—and cello player—Rob Shuffleton, making music with friends.” The vignette identifies the models and speaks of “bygone days” and how little has changed in this part of Vermont. The artistic virtuosity, and the bittersweet aura of time and humility that hangs over the painting, not only go unremarked, they are trampled to death in the onrush of saccharine praise.
NR’s 1912 scholarship drawing, Art Students’ League, unpublished illustration of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “The Deserted Village.”
The Quarry Troop Life Guards, for a story in Boys’ Life, September 1915.
The End of the Road, for a story in St. Nicholas, November 1915.
Vinegar Bill, for a story in Boys’ Life, January 1916.
The Lucky Seventh, a 1914 illustration for the book by Ralph Henry Barbour, published in 1915 by D. Appleton and Company.
Checkers, oil on canvas, 35" x 39", 1928, for a story in Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1929.
Love Ouanga, oil on canvas, 30" x 62", for a story in American Magazine, June 1936.
Peach Crop, oil on canvas, 16" x 36", for a story in American Magazine, April 1935.
Strictly a Sharpshooter, oil on canvas, 30" x 71", for a story in American Magazine, June 1941.
Boy with Baby Carriage, oil on canvas, 20.75" x 18.625", Saturday Evening Post cover, May 20, 1916.
And the Symbol of Welcome Is Light, ad for Edison Mazda, oil on canvas, 40" x 28", 1920.
Bridge Game, Saturday Evening Post cover, May 15, 1948.
Ichabod Crane, oil on canvas, 38" x 24", intended for a series on fictional characters from American literature, c. 1937.
The First 4th, for a story in American Magazine, October 1939.
The Meeting, oil on canvas, 29" x 63", for a story in Good Housekeeping, September 1942.
THE FOUR FREEDOMS
Freedom of Speech, oil on canvas, 45.75" x 35.5", The Saturday Evening Post, February 20, 1943.
Freedom to Worship, oil on canvas, 46" x 35.5", The Saturday Evening Post, February 27, 1943.
Freedom from Want, oil on canvas, 45.75" x 35.5", The Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943.
Freedom from Fear, oil on canvas, 45.75" x 35.5", The Saturday Evening Post, March 13, 1943.
Willie Gillis in Church, Saturday Evening Post cover, July 25, 1942.
Shuffleton’s Barbershop, oil on canvas, 46.25" x 43", Saturday Evening Post cover, April 29, 1950.
Art Critic, oil on canvas, 39.5" x 36.26", The Saturday Evening Post, April 16, 1955.
Saying Grace, oil on canvas, 42" x 40", Saturday Evening Post cover, November 24, 1951.
Breaking Home Ties, oil on canvas, Saturday Evening Post cover, September 25, 1954.
Murder in Missis-sippi (also known as Southern Justice), oil on canvas, 53" x 42", sketch for an article in Look magazine, June 29, 1965.
Triple Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, 44.5" x 34", Saturday Evening Post cover, February 13, 1960.
The Connoisseur, oil on canvas, mounted on board, 37.75" x 31.5", Saturday Evening Post cover, January 13, 1962.
25
Putting One Foot in Front of the Other
Throughout their parents’ troubles, and even in the face of Rockwell’s absolute commitment to his art above all else, the Rockwell sons never doubted their father’s loyalty to their mother. Nor did they question the genuine difficulty Mary Rockwell confronted as she tried to get well. Most of all, the boys felt confused, because so little was explained. Tom Rockwell’s best friend, Buddy Edgerton, saw him “swallowing Maalox all the time.” Rockwell became adamant about the older boys staying close to home while their mother was so sad, and Dick Rockwell, their cousin, remembers his own impression from visiting at the time that Mary was deeply upset at the idea that her boys were growing up and going to move away. “I felt so bad for her,” he recalls, tearing up as he speaks. “She was always incredibly good to me, one of the only people in my life to send me letters and packages overseas when I was in the service. Now, when I saw her, one of her eyes seemed to roll around oddly, and I thought she was really going downhill.” Mostly as further inducement for Jerry to stay at home, Rockwell decided to create a summer artists’ colony that year, and he requested that the Art Students League send him their best students for an internship in Vermont.
When the League director approached twenty-four-year-old Don Spaulding, he jumped at the chance. Spending four months in Arlington studying with an illustrator he considered a master was an experience that fundamentally altered his approach to illustration, enabling him to become the successful cartoonist of Lone Ranger and Buck Jones. Four other Leaguers came with him: Don Winslow, Robert Hogue, Jim Gaboda, and Harold Stevenson. William McBride, an extremely talented young artist who had talked to Rockwell after a lecture the illustrator gave at the University of Vermont, also joined the group; when Photography magazine did a feature on McBride as “Germany’s leading American photo-illustrator,” the photographer granted the majority of his accolades to Rockwell.
The six art students lived and worked in the one-room schoolhouse on the West Arlington village green that Rockwell himself had used as a temporary room in which to paint after the fire in 1943, until construction on his new studio up on the hill next to the family’s new house was finished. At the back of the room, kitchen and dormitory-style living quarters were built on to a platform that had once served as the stage for the schoolhouse. Rockwell, who never exhibited his own work in the house or his studio, hung several of his paintings and two by Mead Schaeffer on the walls.
In the months that Spaulding observed Rockwell up close, he saw little to unsettle his hero worship. The only criticism he would level at the illustrator was the complete lack of household responsibility that accompanied Rockwell’s exhaustive work schedule: “He never had to do a thing. I fixed a door once; I doubt he even knew how. Whenever something went wrong in the household, he said that was Mary’s responsibility.” Rockwell’s attitude toward the need for absolute focus on work extended to his sometimes annoying praise for Will McBride, “fixated on his work,” who, somewhat to the other students’ disgust, got away without doing the dishes, because Rockwell “thought he was a genius, not like the rest of us, whom I sneakingly thought disappointed him,” Spaulding recalls.
Just as Charles Hawthorne had done in Provincetown years before, Rockwell adopted a low-key, casual method of instruction. He issued informal assignments and arranged for models to pose for the students. He might saunter in during the day to comment on their work, or he would invite the students into his studio later to respond to his painting in progress. Rockwell encouraged Mead Schaeffer, Jack Atherton, and George Hughes to talk with them. According to Spaulding, Rockwell enjoyed sitting around and “talking about bringing back the Golden Age of Illustration—all the time, he talked about bringing it back, and how Howard Pyle was his hero.”
Most inspiring to the students, Don Spaulding remembers, was watching Rockwell at work. He shared aloud with them all of the stages he went through—planning, photography, sketching, and painting—and his methodical techniques unraveled before their eyes. “Watching him paint was like being reborn,” Spaulding said quietly, still awestruck at the memory more than twenty-five years later. “It looked so easy. . . . I couldn’t wait to get back to the easel, but the next time I’d work, I couldn’t accomplish what he did, no matter how much I applied myself. He simply came onto this earth a genius.” Rockwell emphasized to the students the importance of discipline and hard work; at times, he explained, he’d deliberately simplify his technique, choosing a one-point perspective, perhaps; but on other occasions, he would resolve a problem by figuring out a more complex treatment, such as the challenge of reflecting light through three different barriers. But always Rockwell was excited about the new painting, hoping that this one would be the masterpiece.
The students’ presence clearly inspired Rockwell to perform well. Not only did their praise gratify him, but, just as in Los Angeles the previous year, he deeply enjoyed becoming part of the tradition of great illustrators who taught. His hero Howard Pyle was as famous for the students he molded in his Wilmington and Chadds Ford school and studios—the “Brandywine group”—as for his own work. And George Bridgman had carried on the tradition of taking seriously the passing on of his master’s gifts, a kind of painterly laying-on of hands. Now Rockwell could position himself within such a tradition, by creating an Arlington school.
The piece he did during the students’ early tenure, Solitaire, published on the August 19, 1950, Post cover, remains one of his most undervalued works. The picture shows a traveling salesman tucked into his motel room bed, a suitcase stacked on his lap to hold his cards. Loneliness and ingenuity both come to life in the formally exact picture, the potential air of Willie Loman–like tragedy marred only by the omnipresent domesticating details—the extra photograph on the wall, the towels neatly hung in clear view.
Although most of the students left at the end of the summer, Don Spaulding stayed into the late fall, while Don Winslow continued to live in the schoolhouse for several more years. Winslow acted as Rockwell’s apprentice for a while, tracing the drawings onto the canvas and painting in an occasional background that required tedious application. Since Rockwell was as warm and funny as Spaulding had been led to believe, he was startled to find the illustrator bonding with the oddball in their group, the manic-depressive Winslow. “They’d often share jokes together, kind of like they understood each other on a different level from the rest of us. And when Don would get low, which he often would, Rockwell would give him pep talks, telling him to pick himself up, get moving. And he’d show him how to correct the problem—it was always about work—and later we’d hear them laughing together over another private joke.”
Rockwell eventually found an agent for Don Winslow, and he tried hard to help him deal with his mood swings, which sadly, before the decade was over, would lead to suicide. Over the next few years, though, Winslow eased Rockwell’s studio demands, but, according to Jarvis Rockwell, Mary tried to get him to leave. She disliked the way the young man’s kinetic presence cut into the spousal intimacy she gained from being indispensable to her husband’s work. If she didn’t occupy that role, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with her life.
Throughout Rockwell’s enacting the decisions he had made long ago to sustain a workload that would succor his various psychol
ogical needs, he tried hard to function honorably as a family man. And he made sure that his family would continue to want him, in spite of his unavailability to them. Yes, he worked seven days a week, all year long; and true, he seemed slightly distant even in the Post-like routine pleasantness he bestowed on his wife and children. He had fed them just enough of himself, of his charm, his humor, his warmth, his caring, to make them want the real thing, the intimacy of a husband and father who saved his private best for them. But he withheld this part of himself so gracefully that it had taken his wife almost twenty years to dare accuse him of failing her. Mary had begun to lose hope of ever possessing her husband, and in that loss of faith and the waning of her belief in ever becoming the true object of desire for Norman Rockwell, her energy to fight her psychic demons faltered.
Norman Rockwell Page 44
