Norman Rockwell's famous Saturday Evening Post covers, the Four Freedoms he painted during the years of World War II, and his depictions of American towns, families, and traditions are all represented in this concise volume. Avidly collected by legendary filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the works offer a picture of America that we all continue to believe in, a world of hope and humanity. Fred Bauer writes about Rockwell's message of optimism and the artist's faith in America and its people, in a forthright and sympathetic text complemented by numerous Rockwell favorites in all their warmth and color. Bauer visits Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Arlington, Vermont, talking to the people who lived with Rockwell and posed for his anecdotal pictures, the people about whom the artist said, "If you are interested in the characters you draw and understand them and love them, why, the people who see your pictures are bound to feel the same way.” This revised edition of this classic volume enables us to rediscover Rockwell’s unique understanding of American greatness.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: H.N. Abrams 1975. Text and captioned illustrations present selections of the artist's work and a brief biographical sketch.

The story of Norman Rockwell's famous series of paintings based on Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four freedoms speech of 1941, including how they came to be created and their impact on the war effort.

"Before the stars of radio, television, and motion pictures captured the American imagination, book and magazine illustrators were the popular heroes of their day. Among this celebrated group, Norman Rockwell emerges supreme, remaining America's most beloved artist even years after the passing of the golden age of illustration. Rockwell's art consistently touched themes that transcend fashion and events and tapped the very wellspring of the American character. It is a well-known fact that Normal Rockwell drew upon his immediate environment for the subjects of his paintings. The people and events in his life were people and events in his illustrations. But who are the people who paraded through the artist's canvases over the years? Here, for the first time, the world of Normal Rockwell is presented as he saw it."--Page [2] of jacket.

"The long-awaited biography of the defining illustrator of the twentieth century by a celebrated art critic"--

Few artists have captured the essence of the American middle class with the warmth, gentle humor, and charm of illustrator Norman Rockwell (18941978). Remembered for the several generations of Saturday Evening Post covers he illustrated, Rockwell had a genius for creating stop-action scenesan art student racing to her next class, a small dog stubbornly blocking trafficmoments with which viewers could easily identify. This book of postcards offers thirty of Rockwells most treasured illustrations.

An unprecedented study of Norman Rockwell's creative process, pairing masterworks of American illustration with the photographs that inspired their execution