Great American Artists - Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell, born in 1894, was an illustrator and painter. He is most well known for The Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations. He produced 321 of these covers which depicted sentimental scenes of American life. Mainly due to the idealistic nature of his paintings, snobbish art critics refused to give him due credit for his great talent. He was not considered to be a "serious" painter by the "intelligentsia" (spoken with a sneer). Only later in his career when be began to demonstrate a "social conscience" with paintings on subjects like racism did he gain respect from the contemporary artists - who were probably also big fans of the National Endowment for the Arts. Needless to say, I am more of a fan of his idealistic and sentimental portrayals of American families and his patriotic work during World War I and II. Samples appear below. His life work included over 4,000 original works, including commissioned portraits of four U.S. Presidents.