Discover Norman Rockwell’s America (& His Legacy)

It was late afternoon in 1978 when the 84-year-old man asked his wife if he could see it again. The woman unlocked the door to the red-barn studio and wheeled the artist into the room. The stale smell of a place no longer used regularly filled their nostrils. The confused Norman Rockwell sat in his wheelchair, gazing at the room frozen in time.

The man battling dementia, who for decades painted the American identity of the 20th century, could no longer recognize where he was. He would die months later—indifferent to the legacy that he was leaving behind.

Norman Rockwell was born in 1894 in New York. At fourteen, his love for art led to a transfer from his public high school to the Chase Art School. After completing college, Rockwell was hired by Boy Scouts of America as a Boys’ Life magazine staff writer, becoming its editor by nineteen.

Having painted numerous covers for the magazine, the artist’s big break came in 1916 after successfully submitting a cover painting to The Saturday Evening Post titled Mother’s Day Off. By year’s end, the young Rockwell’s art graced the magazine’s cover eight times. It was the beginning of the legacy for which he would become known in American history. By the time he switched to the Look magazine after an ownership change at the Post in 1963, Rockwell’s name was synonymous with a specific version of America, his own.

Throughout his career, the illustrator worked tirelessly to produce a canvas mirroring the United States—a nation of unwavering American values—self-reliance and hard work, but also of home, family, and play. The images changed with the times, always staying current, at least in the artists’ perception of what the United States was or should be.

In the 1940s, it was an America of “Four Freedoms,” a series of paintings for the Post taken from a speech to Congress by President Roosevelt following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. During the tumultuous 1960s, it was a nation divided by race, poverty, and the Vietnam War. Yet it was always a proud nation, unafraid to celebrate its leaders and world-altering accomplishments, such as the 1969 moon landing.

His were not just pictures of the United States; they were honest stories of a wholesome nation.

“I love to paint pictures, but I also love to tell a story. Let’s admit our mother would have been more beautiful if she had been smiling. But who could be smiling when she studied a psychology book and spanks her child?”

Rockwell’s drive for authenticity and realism left us with a unique perspective on American 20th-century history—one not lost among dry words locked within long-forgotten books on slightly visited library shelves. But one painted with vivid colors and to this day hanging in doctors’ waiting rooms, restaurants, and cafés, and looking up at us from coffee table books across the nation. The images remain even years after his death, always there to provide a chuckle, a head nod, a smile, or the ability to recognize one’s life within an image.

Rockwell’s depiction of America often centered on the family unit—what it meant to grow up in the United States of the 20th century, grow old, work, love, have a family, or lose one. Through his illustrations, the artist came as close as possible to catching the essence and realism of growing up. In Girl in the Mirror, an insecure girl looks at a mirror, with her doll aside, clinging to a picture of a movie star as she stares at her make-up-covered face.

The permissive attitude towards youthful high spirits of ignoring “no swimming” signs is countered through the realism of studying for exams, wrestling with the perplexities of babysitting, or leaving home for college.

Another famous depiction of the dichotomy between the myth of a perfect American family and the grim realities of life was Rockwell’s The Runaway of a would-be runaway boy and a friendly cop talking at a diner counter, often seen hanging on walls in many diners nationwide.

Young love and family were also common themes in Rockwell’s paintings. In one 1955 painting, Rockwell contrasted a young couple applying for a marriage license with an elderly clerk who had seen it all a thousand times before. Appearing on the Post cover from June 11, 1955, the Marriage License showcased a typical young couple’s hopes in light of the potential dread of everyday life, symbolized through the bright springtime outside the old and dusty room’s open window.

With divorce rates rising throughout the 1960s, Rockwell once again mirrored the realities of love and family in his Marriage Counselor. As the young couple waits for their appointment, an office door takes up half of the image, which, in its simplicity and blankness, symbolizes the unknown territory they, as well as the nation, are about to enter.

In a larger sense, nearly all of Norman Rockwell’s illustrations revolved around a family theme. Yet the illustrator managed to mirror American society and soon-to-be historical events within the paintings of young married couples, sometimes tired out by their young children or overwhelmed with their sickness.

The bitterly divided 1948 election between Harry Truman and Thomas E. Dewey takes center stage in Dewey vs. Truman from the October 30, 1948, Post cover. In the image, a young couple argues over a family breakfast while clenching their respective candidate’s newspaper advertisements. At the same time, their toddler son sits on the floor crying. One can still feel the divisive impact of the election decades ago on home life. Today, Rockwell’s depictions of the American family unit, with detailed living rooms, kitchens, and backyards, serve as a time capsule of what it meant to live and grow up in the mid-20th century United States.

The artist never shied away from the inevitable truth of aging. Still, like with everything else, Rockwell conveyed the assertion that retirement was not something to be feared but celebrated. Whether it was an elderly lady’s first time on the plane or a grandfather hanging out with his grandchildren, the pictures were always full of hope, content, and ever-present optimism. There was the Gone Fishing Post cover of 1930, with an older man enjoying the past time with his dog. Or the Wonders of Radio, from the 1922 Post issue, that once again mirrored American history with an elderly couple growing with the times, in this instance, with the invention of radio just two years before.

During World War II, Norman Rockwell created four images that became national symbols and cemented his legacy as his nation’s art historian. While the President of the United States provided the concept behind the “Four Freedoms” and the purpose of the nation’s involvement in the conflict in his January 6, 1941 Annual Message to Congress, Rockwell deconstructed it for the average American so they could feel and understand it. The “Freedom” paintings remain as compelling and inspirational today as they did in 1943 when he painted them.

The speech and Rockwell’s accompanying images, which appeared as a series in The Saturday Evening Post, highlighted the US mission to help secure the four essential human freedoms for all future generations worldwide. The paintings—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—caught the country’s imagination at their publication. And although they presented a very black-and-white interpretation of right and wrong, they were period pieces that seemed perfect for the times they depicted. They meant to inspire the sacrifice of a generation, and they did not fail.

Although Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s address took place in 1941, the Office of War Information reported in 1942 that despite pamphlets, posters, displays, and other public outreach, “only about one-third of the American public [had] any knowledge of the Four Freedoms as such, [and] no more than two percent surveyed [were] able to identify all four of them correctly.” It took Rockwell six months to complete the commissioned paintings of The Four Freedoms for the Post.

Freedom of Speech showcases an unharassed lone dissenter at a town meeting. Freedom to Worship focuses on close-ups of heads and hands in prayer with the words “Each according to the dictates of his own conscience.” The final two images, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear, depict a Thanksgiving dinner and parents tucking their kids into bed, respectively. The former became one of the best-known images in American visual history. Often called “The Thanksgiving Picture,” it has been reproduced countless times with Disney characters, in political cartoons, and even as an advertisement for food.

The Four Freedoms launched as an exhibit nationwide in April 1943, during which over 1.2 million people viewed them. The events would sell $132 million worth of war bonds. The New Yorker reported at the war’s end that the public received The Four Freedoms “with more enthusiasm, perhaps than any other paintings in the history of American art.”

If an American sees only one Norman Rockwell image throughout their life, it would be a safe bet to say that it would be one from this World War II collection, seen anywhere from textbook covers to necktie collections.

Another image from the war years, which exhorts as much popularity and enthusiasm, is the artist’s depiction of Rosie the Riveter from the May 29, 1943 Post cover. In an equally funny and inspiring image, the artist captured the new women’s roles in World War II, his Rosie showing the world she could do the same work as any man. During the conflict, the female percentage of the US workforce increased by ten percent, and by the war’s end, one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

Rockwell’s Rosie was a muscular lady who sat on a crate in a pose reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel. A riveting machine rested on her lap as her feet used an old copy of the infamous Hitler’s Mein Kampf as support, with an American flag proudly taking up the entire background of the image. It was enough history to fill a textbook chapter, all captured through just one Post cover.

A Catalyst for Change

Norman Rockwell’s version of America was also not afraid to show the real hardships of the American people. Rockwell countered the nation’s accomplishments: successful presidents, Peace Corps, or the Moon Landing, with just enough of its shortcomings. And none were more prominent in his work than race and poverty. Rockwell summarizes the politically turbulent 1960s with a singular painting: The Problem We All Live In With (1964).

The image tells the story of a brave young African American girl walking, escorted by US Marshalls, toward her desegregated school. Although not directly a picture of Ruby Bridges, the painting was inspired by the child who was the first to desegregate an all-white elementary school in Louisiana in 1960. The illustration was his first for the Look magazine, whose editor allowed him to take on more challenging social subjects than The Saturday Evening Post ever did.

At the time, many parents pulled their white children out following Ruby’s first day at the William Frantz Elementary School. A single volunteer female teacher taught Ruby in an empty classroom for nearly a year. With offensive graffiti denouncing integration on the wall behind his young subject as she walked to school, Norman Rockwell’s painting refused to hide that the American system was broken.

In a letter to the Look’s editor at the time of its publication, one Florida reader wrote, “Rockwell’s picture is worth a thousand words… I am saving this issue for my children with the hope that the subject matter will have become history by the time they become old enough to comprehend its meaning.”

Rockwell would follow his new direction of exposing American social ills with his illustration for a Look article about “Southern Justice.” Murder in Mississippi told of the 1964 murders of Civil Rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. The painting depicted the young men in the last moments of their lives with the glare of car headlights forming the threatening elongated shadows of the approaching Klansmen.

Rockwell’s third Civil Rights painting, New Kids in the Neighborhood, mirrored the changing racial profile of American suburbia. As the African American children, with the moving truck in the background, stand holding a cat, they are met with the stares of curious white kids with a dog. Rockwell shows that the kids will soon play together, per their shared interests, with both kid groups holding a baseball glove. Yet, the subtle inclusion of an adult face peeking at the scene from behind one of the curtains in the background shows a nation still hesitant to accept it.

Concurrent with the turbulent decade, among many other paintings, the illustrator created another image that captured the nation perfectly. In 1965’s How Goes the War on Poverty, once more for Look magazine, Rockwell’s symbolic clasping of hands was accompanied by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s quote from his 1964 speech to VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), “Hope for the poor, achievement for yourself, greatness for your nation.”

The painting appeared alongside the magazine’s article on the President’s Great Society legislation program meant to right the ills of the nation’s high poverty levels, inequality of wealth, lack of proper insurance for the needy and elderly, and inadequate education funding. Like with “The Four Freedoms” before it, the image gave life to a significant social issue impacting the lives of everyday people and explained a purpose behind political decisions that affected all Americans.

Norman Rockwell’s Legacy

During his career, which spanned over six decades, Norman Rockwell never attained the status of his contemporary colleagues who filled the galleries of major metropolitan areas nationwide. Yet, he never seemed to mind too much. “I just do things, and people pay me very high prices,” he once told the Associated Press in 1974.

It did not bother him that his critics pointed out the simplicity of his work or called it superficial. Rockwell never claimed that his depiction of America was anything other than his interpretation of it.

“I paint life as I would like it to be,” he once said. “If there is sadness in my created world, it is a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems. The situations [people] get into are commonplace.”

Still, through a closer analysis of his work, it becomes evident that sometimes subtly and other times more explicitly, Norman Rockwell was not afraid to make his canvases show America’s shortcomings as much as its successes. And that is what makes him a true historian.