Session 9 : Midcentury American Illustration

For this research task I had chosen to look at some paintings and illustrations by Norman Rockwell. Norman Rockwell was an American illustrator born on the 3rd of February 1894 in New Yor. At age 14 Norman went to the Chase art school, then he was accepted into the National academy of design then he had joined the art students league, which is a New York art school.

Rockwell’s first work was for St Nicholas magazine, Boys life magazine, the boy scouts of America magazine, as well as much more magazine publications. At age 19 he named the art editor for Boys life magazine. Following this Rockwell moved to New Rochelle in New York and did some work alongside Clyde Forsythe. Rockwell had submitted some work to the Saturday Evening Post and had 8 pieces of work published. And then over the span of his career Rockwell had published 323 original covers in the space of 47 years. As well as doing work for The Saturday Post Rockwell had also done work for other magazines such as Life magazine, Literary Digest, Country Gentleman and more.

During WW2 Rockwell had painted a 4-part series of paintings inspired by a speech from Franklin D Roosevelt, where Roosevelt the mentioned Four Freedoms for universal rights. The paintings where published by the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. The four paintings in this series where titled ‘Freedom from want’, ‘Freedom from Speech’, ‘Freedom of Worship’ and ‘Freedom from Fear’.