Norman Rockwell by Laura Claridge

Rockwell, remembers. And Jerry himself admitted that “I have very little memory of him as a baby. He was always frail, quite thin and I considered him delicate. I was rather rough I’m afraid and did not play very gently with my young brother.”
    Norman, striving to emulate his brother and gain his approval, sought opportunities to join in the older boy’s activities. Luckily, when Jerry began grammar school at P.S. 46, Norman quickly discovered a sure way to increase his own currency: he learned to draw. Although his father had actually been copying pictures from magazines for years, Jerry’s obviously important homework—completed at the dining room table under his father’s watchful eyes—goaded Norman into joining the fraternity. After a few days of boredom, Norman asked “Papa” to teach him how to draw too, and then all three Rockwell “men” began a routine of working together every evening after dinner.
    Motivation aside, the inspiration was divinely directed, that much seems clear. Waring was no mean draftsman. A pencil sketch from around 1900 of a Northern European countryside shows his fine mastery of perspective, form, and detail. Although a nightly routine of copying magazine illustrations is nearly unimaginable a hundred years later, at the beginning of the twentieth century the hobby was popular in many households, especially those of an artistic bent. Night after night, Waring sat with his two sons, his wife calmly embroidering on the nearby sofa, the glow of soft maize-colored gaslight casting warm shadows that Rockwell would call upon years later when painting his own Dutch-inspired domestic scenes.
    By the time Norman was sharing magazines with his father, the Golden Age of Illustration, roughly the period from 1880 to 1930, was peaking. Well represented by such artists as Howard Pyle, Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, Harrison Fisher, James Montgomery Flagg, Frederic Remington, Arthur Frost, and Edward Kemble, the period around the turn of the century was a watershed for illustration, proving that the mass production of extraordinarily high-quality art was possible and profitable. Artistic talent put to use in magazines was no longer new, for sure: Winslow Homer had illustrated the New Year of 1869 in
Harper’s Weekly,
showing 1870 riding in on a velocipede, an early bicycle.
Scribner’s
and
Harper’s
both pioneered the use of wood engravings, and, by 1884,
Century
and
Harper’s
were both reserving a full 15 percent of their space for pictures. Although the production methods of the past quarter century had produced an overabundance of lackluster illustration alongside the outpourings of first-rate artists, the last years of the nineteenth century coincided with a revivified period of quality magazines set to exploit improved technologies.
    When Rockwell was born, the American magazine had finally triumphed over its close competition from England;
Judge
and
Life
were finally outselling
Punch
in the United States. Ushered into lower-class homes through the reduced prices caused by the financial panics of the 1890s, magazines would play a part in forming the national consciousness until the end of World War I, superseded only by radio and television. This visual/verbal venue of mass circulation seemed to symbolize America’s new strength as an industrial, muscular, modern country—its mission nothing less than to become a world leader. By association, the art that appeared in such periodicals was assumed worthy of study. It was this forum overladen with all things American, progressive, and communal that anchored the nightly bonding of the Rockwell males.
    Imagining the family scene where Norman Rockwell undertook his first drawing proves irresistible. Slightly churlish throughout his life, little Jerry must have lorded over his pesky brother the importance of his own real work. At the turn of the century, the curriculum of New York City primary grades depended heavily upon