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"Abstract and Concrete" 1962
Photo, courtesy, The Brooklyn Museum 

Norman Rockwell 
In decided contrast to James Montgomery Flagg (see opposite page) Norman Rockwell did not care for the life of the metropolis. A good part of his working life was spent in Arlington, Vermont and in Stockbridge, Mass. He was a New Yorker to begin with, however, and was born in a railroad flat, February 3, 1894. As a child he studied at the National Academy of Design, then dropped out of high school in his second year to study at the Art Students League with George B. Bridgman and Thomas Fogarty- the father of the present League instructor. It was not long before he was selling his illustrations. 
Norman Rockwell illustrated scores of books and hundreds of advertisements. The March 12, 1955 issue of The Saturday Evening Post celebrated his long association with this famous magazine with nine of his covers reproduced simultaneously on the cover, and a 12-page supplement inside. In all, Rockwell did more than 300 covers for The Saturday Evening Post which in 1943 also commissioned him to paint The Four Freedoms. When these went on tour they induced Americans to purchase war bonds to the tune of $133,000,000. Rockwell’s illustrations also appeared regularly in the Women’s Home Companion, the Ladies Home Journal, the American Magazine, the Woman’s Home Companion, Look Magazine, McCalls, etc. He did thirty-four Boy Scout calendars. 
The reason for Norman Rockwell’s enduring popularity lay in his unfailing ability to mirror in his art the myths and desires of the average, grassroots, American. The models he chose were the ordinary, American people who lived all about him. He viewed life with affection- and his fans sensed this. As the famous editor and writer Dorothy Canfield Fisher said, on the occasion of the inclusion of a Norman Rockwell in the 75th Anniversary Exhibition of the Art Students League at the  Metropolitan Museum in 1951: “Twentieth-century men and women accept as their highest good, the normal, peaceful, fruitful, joy-giving relations between human beings. For the people of our day, Norman Rockwell speaks eloquently”. 
The Rockwell Society of America was established in 1974 by a group of collectors dedicated to the appreciation and the propagation of Norman Rockwell’s art. It is located in Ardsley, N.Y. In 1977 it funded the Rockwell Society of America Scholarship Fund in honor of Norman Rockwell for an annual scholarship at the Art Students League. This year’s scholarship will start in the fall of 1984, and will be good for one class for the full season ending in May, 1985. 
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