Read Online American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Deborah Solomon
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through the snowy countryside,” Rockwell recalled, “trying not to think.”
He never forgave Wilson for leaving him stranded. For leaving him to continue his quest by himself, in the unforgiving city. Stranded like a boy in one of those shipwreck stories in Boys’ Life , but without the resourcefulness to know what to do next.
FIVE
NEW ROCHELLE, ART CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
(1914 TO 1916)
It is frequently the case that an artist who moves to a new city pursues a new direction in his work. A stay in Paris has altered the lives of so many artists it sometimes seems as if a whiff of French air is enough to turn any provincial into a modernist. Think of New Rochelle, New York, as Norman Rockwell’s Paris.
Early in 1914, Nancy Rockwell decided to leave Manhattan and move the family into Brown Lodge, a rooming house in New Rochelle. It was listed in directories as a hotel and she considered the arrangement more prestigious than having her own house. Undine Spragg, the spoiled heroine of Edith Wharton’s Custom of the Country , felt her family “could not hope to get on while they ‘kept house’—all the fashionable people they knew boarded or lived in hotels.” The novel was published in 1913, just a year before the Rockwells moved into their own hotel, or rather into Brown Lodge, a white-shingled house on a quiet street. It was just around the corner from Main Street, where trolleycars clanged and fine shops stretched on block after block. You could buy a player piano at Baumer, have your parasol repaired at the Umbrella Hospital, or see the latest Charlie Chaplin movie at the Loew’s Theatre.
After the ordeals of the previous months—her son’s aborted Panama trip and all the rest—Mrs. Rockwell thought that New Rochelle would be an ideal place to live. For starters, it was home to about a dozen illustrators of some renown, men who contributed to magazines that everyone read, like Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post . Its origin as an art colony went back to 1890, when Frederic Remington, the legendary painter of the Old West, gave up his apartment in New York City and purchased an estate in New Rochelle. Many of his paintings of the untrammeled frontier were done not in Wyoming or Montana but at his atelier on Webster Avenue, where he kept horses and became a suburban cowboy.
Rockwell arrived in New Rochelle just in time to participate in a show that was quite prestigious—the first annual juried exhibition of the New Rochelle Art Association. It opened in May 1914 in the fine arts room at the brand-new New Rochelle Public Library, a handsome pale-brick structure that owed its existence to a grant from Andrew Carnegie. At age twenty, Rockwell was the youngest artist in the show. 1 He exhibited two works, which were identified on a checklist, rather unhelpfully, as “Illustration” and “Sketch.” He was still Norman P. Rockwell, an artist who used his middle initial when he signed his name. Rockwell’s coexhibitors at the library were an illustrious (and initial-heavy) bunch, including Frederic S. Remington, who by then had died; J. C. Leyendecker; Frank X. Leyendecker; and C. Coles Phillips.
Of all the artists in New Rochelle, Rockwell was the most taken with Joseph Leyendecker (pronounced LINE-decker), the star cover artist for The Saturday Evening Post. Today he is remembered as the creator of the Arrow Collar Man, a handsome, square-jawed figure and the first preppy in American advertising. But in his time, Leyendecker was beloved for his Post covers. A German immigrant and master draftsman, he used a crisp, spiky Northern European line to portray scenes of American life, many of them tied to national holidays. His covers might show a New Year’s baby bestriding a globe, a pilgrim hunting a Thanksgiving turkey, or elves pummeling Santa with snowballs.
In contrast to most other illustrators, who specialized in pretty-girl covers, Leyendecker favored genre scenes. “Girls’ heads are
He never forgave Wilson for leaving him stranded. For leaving him to continue his quest by himself, in the unforgiving city. Stranded like a boy in one of those shipwreck stories in Boys’ Life , but without the resourcefulness to know what to do next.
FIVE
NEW ROCHELLE, ART CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
(1914 TO 1916)
It is frequently the case that an artist who moves to a new city pursues a new direction in his work. A stay in Paris has altered the lives of so many artists it sometimes seems as if a whiff of French air is enough to turn any provincial into a modernist. Think of New Rochelle, New York, as Norman Rockwell’s Paris.
Early in 1914, Nancy Rockwell decided to leave Manhattan and move the family into Brown Lodge, a rooming house in New Rochelle. It was listed in directories as a hotel and she considered the arrangement more prestigious than having her own house. Undine Spragg, the spoiled heroine of Edith Wharton’s Custom of the Country , felt her family “could not hope to get on while they ‘kept house’—all the fashionable people they knew boarded or lived in hotels.” The novel was published in 1913, just a year before the Rockwells moved into their own hotel, or rather into Brown Lodge, a white-shingled house on a quiet street. It was just around the corner from Main Street, where trolleycars clanged and fine shops stretched on block after block. You could buy a player piano at Baumer, have your parasol repaired at the Umbrella Hospital, or see the latest Charlie Chaplin movie at the Loew’s Theatre.
After the ordeals of the previous months—her son’s aborted Panama trip and all the rest—Mrs. Rockwell thought that New Rochelle would be an ideal place to live. For starters, it was home to about a dozen illustrators of some renown, men who contributed to magazines that everyone read, like Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post . Its origin as an art colony went back to 1890, when Frederic Remington, the legendary painter of the Old West, gave up his apartment in New York City and purchased an estate in New Rochelle. Many of his paintings of the untrammeled frontier were done not in Wyoming or Montana but at his atelier on Webster Avenue, where he kept horses and became a suburban cowboy.
Rockwell arrived in New Rochelle just in time to participate in a show that was quite prestigious—the first annual juried exhibition of the New Rochelle Art Association. It opened in May 1914 in the fine arts room at the brand-new New Rochelle Public Library, a handsome pale-brick structure that owed its existence to a grant from Andrew Carnegie. At age twenty, Rockwell was the youngest artist in the show. 1 He exhibited two works, which were identified on a checklist, rather unhelpfully, as “Illustration” and “Sketch.” He was still Norman P. Rockwell, an artist who used his middle initial when he signed his name. Rockwell’s coexhibitors at the library were an illustrious (and initial-heavy) bunch, including Frederic S. Remington, who by then had died; J. C. Leyendecker; Frank X. Leyendecker; and C. Coles Phillips.
Of all the artists in New Rochelle, Rockwell was the most taken with Joseph Leyendecker (pronounced LINE-decker), the star cover artist for The Saturday Evening Post. Today he is remembered as the creator of the Arrow Collar Man, a handsome, square-jawed figure and the first preppy in American advertising. But in his time, Leyendecker was beloved for his Post covers. A German immigrant and master draftsman, he used a crisp, spiky Northern European line to portray scenes of American life, many of them tied to national holidays. His covers might show a New Year’s baby bestriding a globe, a pilgrim hunting a Thanksgiving turkey, or elves pummeling Santa with snowballs.
In contrast to most other illustrators, who specialized in pretty-girl covers, Leyendecker favored genre scenes. “Girls’ heads are
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