CHAPTER 5

The Move to Massachusetts

By the time the volunteer firemen reached Norman’s studio, they were unable to save anything. All the paintings, sketches, brushes, paints, props, and costumes were gone. Norman even lost his Howard Pyle prints. “Well, there goes my life’s work,” said Norman. He was forty-nine years old. He had overcome difficult situations in his life, and now he would do it again. He made a sketch of the event called My Studio Burns for the Post. Then Norman built a new studio and got right back to work.

Norman’s paintings changed after the fire. Although he had new brushes, easels, and paints, he had lost all the old-fashioned costumes and props he had collected. Over the years, he had used them to illustrate scenes from the past. After the fire, Norman no longer painted scenes with early presidents, pirates, or pioneers. His work focused more on the present.

The present situation that Norman focused on most was World War II. But he didn’t paint scenes of soldiers fighting. Americans had loved his Four Freedoms that showed ordinary people. So Norman decided to paint Americans who were helping the war effort at home. Norman painted women factory workers making supplies for the soldiers, men listening to war reports on the radio, a returned soldier peeling potatoes for his mother, and many other everyday scenes.

One of the most famous paintings he did during this time was called Rosie the Riveter. The painting shows a strong-looking woman with a rivet gun in her lap and a sandwich in her hand, taking her lunch break. It appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943.

Rosie the Riveter

And when it looked like World War II was coming to an end, Norman painted scenes of soldiers returning to their families. The paintings helped Americans feel proud about the sacrifices they had made during the war.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Norman’s work was more popular than ever. His name was known not only by Americans but by people all over the world. But Norman felt he needed another change. Once again he thought a new town and a new studio might inspire new ideas. Mary had not been well. And Norman hoped that moving closer to Mary’s doctors would be better for the family. So in 1953, Norman and Mary moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Just as they had immediately fit into Arlington, Vermont, Norman and Mary fit into Stockbridge right away. They became friends with the townspeople. Many wanted to model for Norman, and he soon found his favorites.

Models pose for Rockwell’s painting The Optician

The Wartime Workforce

During World War II, factories around the country were busy making tanks, vehicles, ships, airplanes, and weapons to be used in the war.

Many men who worked in those factories left their jobs to join the armed forces. Those jobs needed to be filled, so many factory owners hired women to keep their factories running. To inspire women to take factory jobs, the US government came up with an advertising idea that featured a character called “Rosie the Riveter.” Rosie was the symbol of strong, patriotic women who were proud to help their country during the war by taking jobs in factories and shipyards.

Not long after the Rockwells moved to Stockbridge, Norman painted Breaking Home Ties. The painting tells the story of a young man moving away from home. It was Norman’s way of revealing what was happening in his own life. Jarvis had enlisted in the Air Force, and Tom and Peter were growing up and thinking about their futures. The painting reflects Norman’s feelings about his sons leaving home. In the scene, a father and son are sitting next to each other on their truck. The son is heading to college. He is smiling nervously as he waits for the train that will take him there. The father isn’t looking at the train or his son. He looks tired and sad that his son is off to start a new life.

The Rockwells enjoyed their life in Stockbridge. Mary looked after everything in their daily lives so that Norman could concentrate on his work. During this time, Norman painted some of his most memorable covers for The Saturday Evening Post, including Art Critic, Girl at the Mirror, Soda Jerk, and The Runaway. These were all paintings showing one single moment in the subject’s life. These weren’t fancy or heroic people, just plain people being themselves.

Soda Jerk

In 1959, Mary died in her sleep of a heart attack. The couple had been married for twenty-nine years. The boys had all grown up and moved away, and Norman was alone in the Stockbridge house. Many of Norman’s friends encouraged him to get out and do things. They didn’t want him staying by himself and being sad.

Norman took his friends’ advice and signed up for a poetry class. The class was taught by a retired teacher named Molly Punderson. She was surprised to have someone so famous in her class. She was also surprised at how humble Norman was. And Norman was impressed by how Molly could recite hundreds of poems by heart. Norman was glad he had listened to his friends’ advice. The couple fell in love and were married on October 25, 1961. Later Norman said, “I don’t know how I would have made it if it hadn’t been for Molly.”

Triple Self-Portrait

After his wife Mary’s death, Norman Rockwell started one of his most famous paintings and one of the most famous paintings in American art: Triple Self-Portrait.

The painting shows Norman sitting in front of a canvas, looking at himself in a mirror as he paints. There are four pictures tacked to the right side of the canvas. They are self-portraits of the artists Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. These artists are all well-known for painting themselves. Rembrandt painted more than ninety self-portraits!

In this work, Norman is poking fun at the self-portrait as a form of painting. The viewer can see how Norman has made himself look better on the canvas than he looks in the mirror. He is humorously comparing himself to the master painters who are looking at him from their own self-portraits. Triple Self-Portrait appeared on the cover of the February 13, 1960, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

Norman was happy with his home life. But The Saturday Evening Post was becoming less popular and fewer people were reading it. By the early 1960s, there were many other magazines for readers to buy. Most people now had televisions and got their news and entertainment from TV programming. The editors at the Post hoped that asking Norman to paint new and different kinds of covers would increase the magazine’s popularity again.

The Post sent Norman around the world to paint portraits of world leaders. He sketched Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia. At home, he painted portraits of American politicians such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy. As always, Norman took great time and attention with these portraits. These were important men. He wanted to capture the details and their personalities perfectly.

Rockwell with his painting of Jawaharlal Nehru

Although the portraits were just what the Post wanted, they were not what Norman wanted. He missed creating pictures that told stories. He had a special talent for capturing life in a single moment, and he wanted to keep doing that. Norman felt that the Post no longer truly valued his talent. So in 1963, at the age of sixty-nine and after 323 covers, Norman stopped working for The Saturday Evening Post.