Gregory Copeland - Who Was Norman Rockwell?

Who Was Norman Rockwell?

In June 1993, almost fifteen years after Norman Rockwell died, the Norman Rockwell Museum opened in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Stockbridge is the town where Norman had lived and worked for the last twenty-five years of his life. And this new museum had been built to hold the largest collection of Norman Rockwell art in the world.

The opening of the museum was a special occasion. Many people who had posed for Norman were there. His sons planted a tree in his memory. Children played and ran around the beautiful lawn and museum grounds. The crowd sang America the Beautiful. The day was like a scene from one of Normans own paintings! According to an article in the New York Times, The sun was shining brightly, of course. The sky was blue and the weather was temperate. There were Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts... antique fire engines and a four-clown band. It was an all-American Day. A Norman Rockwell day.

Norman Rockwell painted scenes that captured the everyday experiences of Americans. His paintings made people feel special. They also made people think, laugh, and sometimes cry. They reflected the lives of ordinary Americans. And they often seemed to give people hope.

Norman Perceval Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894, in New York City. He was the second child of Nancy Hill Rockwell and Jarvis Waring Rockwell. Their firstborn son, Normans brother, Jarvis, was a year and a half older than Norman.

When Norman was born, the Rockwells lived on the fifth floor of a brownstone building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At the time, the neighborhood was a bit rough and tough. There were a few street gangs who liked to start fights. Norman and his older brother did their best to stay out of trouble.

The kids in the Rockwells neighborhood spent a lot of time playing games, like tag and touch football. Jarvis was athletic and good at sports. He got picked for teams all the time. But Norman was skinny and clumsy, and he hardly ever got chosen to be on a team. Fortunately, Norman was good at something else: He could draw.

In the 1890s, when Norman Rockwell was born, New York City had a population of just over 1.5 million people. Today more than 8.5 million people live there!

The city is made up of five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. Some of the neighborhoods in these boroughs are famous for their brownstone buildings, which are usually just called brownstones. They are given that name because of the dark stone that was used to cover the front of the buildings. It was less expensive than stone such as limestone, granite, and marble. Some brownstones were built for just one family. But many were apartment buildings for multiple families. They were affordable homes for the working class.

The Rockwell home was a quiet, serious place. Some nights Normans father would sketch copies of pictures from magazines. Norman would sit and watch him. He would try to copy what his father drew. Normans father also read aloud to the family at night. As his father read, Norman would draw the characters in the story. He would imagine what they looked like and how they acted. Some of the books he read were by the famous British author Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens wrote some of the worlds most famous books. He was born into a poor family and left school at the age of fifteen. Charles had several jobs after leaving school, and he hated all of them. In 1836, he finally got a job that he liked: the editor of a literary magazine. While he was working there, he decided to start writing.

Many of Charles Dickenss books are about the hard life and times of working-class people in Victorian England. Dickens based some of them on his own life experiences. The characters in his books feel realistic because he came from a poor background himself. Some of his most famous books are: Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations.

Normans father was a textile salesmanhe sold fabric. Normans mother was a homemaker. Mrs. Rockwell was often sick, and she stayed in bed a lot. So Norman and Jarvis were often left to look after themselves. Normans father fussed over his ill wife and took care of her. But he didnt pay much attention to his sons. Because of this, Norman did not always feel loved at home, and he sometimes felt very alone. Those feelings stayed with Norman throughout his life.