Art Chowder November | December, Issue 24 | Page 37

H
is insistence on authenticity
in his productions cannot be
denied. For Mark Twain’s
Huckleberry Finn he had gone to
Hannibal, Missouri but ran into
difficulty finding clothing with
the right wear and tear for his
models. “You can’t buy a new
straw hat and make it look old
by rubbing dirt into it. I’d tried
that; it doesn’t work. 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.”
Near desperation he happened
upon “… a man walking along
the road wearing a straw hat in a
beautiful state of decay — sun-
bleached, ragged — and trousers
patched and stained and tattered
and boots down at the heel and
out at the toes. I stopped the car.
I was desperate. ‘Will you sell
me that hat?’” 4
Rockwell’s was the first artist’s
name I heard and his Post covers
the first art I saw in color. I
call my early childhood in the
‘50s my “Norman Rockwell’s
America” period because the
human types he illustrated were
just like those around me: the
family doctor (when they still
made house calls), the nurse-
secretary with her white uniform
and nurse’s cap, the corner
grocer (to whom my mother
gave the list and he’d climb a
ladder to get the Post Toasties
down from the high shelf), the
garage mechanics, the friendly
policeman who let me sit in
his car, the old spinster school
teacher … there was then what
seemed a stable order to the
world.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
“Charwomen in Theater” - study
1946, oil paint over photographic base
14 1/2” x 11”, signed lower right, inscribed on mat
The Saturday Evening Post April 6, 1946 cover study
After the large charcoal, Rockwell had it photographed and printed on matte
paper the exact size of a Post cover; he would then work out the color scheme on
top of the print in oil paint. Solving the problems on a small scale first made the
actual painting proceed more quickly.
Norman Rockwell
“Choir Boy Combing Hair For Easter”
1954, oil on canvas
29” x 26 1/2”, signed lower right and inscribed en verso ‘P709’
The Saturday Evening Post April 17, 1954 cover
Rockwell had actually been a choirboy in his youth.
No reproduction can give even a hint of the richness of the reds here, which were
first painted in opaque vermilion and then deepened with an alizarin or madder
November | December 2019
glaze, an old masters technique.
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