Norman Rockwell by Sherry Marker (book review).
In the UK, we might have heard of artist Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) but rarely came across his artwork. It isn’t though there aren’t a couple books about him. I accidentally pulled his biography when I really wanted to look at his art first, and this book by Sherry Marker from 2004 fits the bill. A very large book, giving plenty of space to his paintings.
Rockwell depended on models posing for his pictures to get his photo-realism looks, but he used each picture to tell a story. In comic books, we see that as continuity, often compacted into a splash page or even a cover. Rockwell does it with a sense of humour, and you are drawn into the picture, looking at how the characters are reacting to the situation. I suppose using real people also prevented elements of too much exaggeration and nailing the right mood, although it would be interesting to see how his models kept their expressions. Marker points out that with children, he had to work harder to stop them from fidgeting. When I’ve worked from life in the past, I tend to layout the pose and then focus on the bits I need to get right rather than have them totally still, and that was mostly with pencil rather than painting. A lot of the time, a physical pose means you can check the right colour levels, all the right folds in the clothes, and don’t abbreviate anything with what you expect to be there rather than what is actually there. It’s good training for the eye. Rockwell does this not only with his models but also with the props and scenery in the painting, so everything has some sort of significance. It’s also a good trick because the viewer thinks everything is there and won’t spot any omissions. You rarely see the light source, like the sun, in his paintings in this book, but the reflected light does what it should, so you don’t question it.
Absorbing all his works here, something that does become obvious is that they are all linear paintings. That is, level with the artist looking at the scene from his easel. No unusual angles, or even any that are slightly higher or looking up at the scene. Of course, much of this has to do with magazine covers, where the reader needs to be drawn into the scene without anything too fancy other than good art. The book doesn’t show any of his other work for comparison, so there’s no knowledge of whether he painted looking down from a pedestal or looking up from a pit to change his position.
One can’t undermine the fact that Rockwell was good at photorealism, and it’s pretty obvious he recognised what his audience wanted to see, even if he had to go on his travels to see things for himself. His paintings captured the imagery, even if it was somewhat idealised. Even author Marker pointed out that there were few pictures of black people, although the two here are striking and make a good political statement against racism. Again, Rockwell was an artist for hire and did what he was briefed to do. Oh, there is one space painting here of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.
Finally, pay attention to his signature as it changes in each painting to be integrated into the painting.
GF Willmetts
March 2024
(pub: JG Press/World Publications Group, 2004. 112 page very large hardback. Price: varies. ISBN: 1-57215-382-2)
