Norman Rockwell

by Laura Claridge

  On March 22, 1972, the retrospective opened at the Brooklyn Museum, its first major venue, where it would run through May 14. John Canaday, the art critic for The New York Times, whose judgment Rockwell deeply respected, threaded his review from the beginning with contempt for what he saw as cotton-candy narrative art and scorn for those ill-guided audiences who enjoyed it. Rockwell was cited in the review as America’s “best-loved” artist, and the hoi polloi who lined the exhibition ramps were, sarcastically, the “best-loving” crowds. The critic nodded not only at the older generation who grew up on The Saturday Evening Post, but at the young people now interested in Rockwell because of the current “nostalgia boom.” Canaday’s review may well represent the epitome of the contempt felt by critics or connoisseurs who either saw no value in a narrative tradition of genre art or misinterpreted, as an arrogant graduate student might patronize Sherwood Anderson or Robert Browning, the stories Rockwell’s paintings told. Repeatedly, Canaday offered misreadings of the most egregious sort, reducing to pure sweetness and light the implications of time and loss in some of Rockwell’s most important paintings. In contrast to what he believed the patently false world of Norman Rockwell, Canaday ended his review, “It was a pleasure to shoulder my way back to the office through the crowd of pimps, prostitutes and perverts [in Times Square]. They were so real.”

  It was the very “realness” of Rockwell’s paintings that in late spring made the exhibition so popular when it reached the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. (the same venue that in 2000 would house a similar retrospective encapsulating the nostalgia wave of the fin de siècle). Fifteen years earlier, in 1957, the Corcoran had welcomed Rockwell’s art at the same time that the Museum of Modern Art in New York was exhibiting Edward Steichen’s The Family of Man, and knowing, respectful critics used the two shows to ponder the place of photography, illustration, and easel painting among the arts.

  As if to avoid reading such stinging criticism as that leveled by John Canaday, Rockwell had decided to leave the country during the month that the exhibition arrived at the Brooklyn Museum. He and Molly went to Rome for three weeks in March, where they whisked Cinny away for a weeklong side trip without her children and husband, a kindness the mother of four felt keenly. The trip to Italy proved so rejuvenating that the Rockwells immediately began planning a vacation to the Netherlands. They increasingly depended on such journeys for more than diversion and rest; the only way that they seemed able to enjoy privacy these days was, paradoxically, to travel. At home, they were dealing with everything from letters claiming that Rockwell had fathered a child in Germany, to a fifteen-year-old boy who slept outside the couple’s front door in hopes of being allowed to live with them. “I remember someone calling them up at three A.M. from a Miami bar one time,” Susan Merrill says. “The man said, ‘I just wanted to tell you how much I admire your work.’ ”

  Rockwell would have given up advertising work at this time if the pay weren’t so exceptional. Modestly dressed in his typical khakis and blue work shirt, he told interviewers of his shock in realizing that in 1971 he had made $1.4 million, largely as a result of such commercial work. One of his most lucrative outlets, he admitted, was the covers of companies’ annual reports, including McDonald’s, which paid him $10,000 for rendering a hamburger, as far as he could tell. Much of the leap in his income was due to the nearly universally deplored engravings he did for the Franklin Mint during this year, a major commission he notably failed to mention. As the interview proceeded, and Rockwell was congratulated for landing his portrait of Nixon in Washington’s National Gallery, he protested that the new hoopla about him being an artist rather than an illustrator was interfering with his work. Ambivalent about the cost of fame, which seemed tied to proving him a “fine arts man,” he complained, “I’m not painting when I’m out doing some public stunt.”

  But at least he was feeling expansive, relaxed, and in no danger of being suffocated by the past. Grumbling to his wife a little, but turning a gracious side to his old local government, Rockwell accepted the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce’s invitation to attend its celebration of the city’s history. The city proclaimed June 24, 1972, “Norman Rockwell Day,” and proceeded to rename one block of Memorial Highway “Norman Rockwell Boulevard.” Armed with a list of people he hoped to see, the artist visited the city he’d not returned to since he and Mary had moved to Vermont; sadly, he confessed with some embarrassment, they were all dead. Increasingly he felt the world around him to reflect the death of his generation, and he stepped up his efforts to make an impact on what he considered a less fortunate, less happy society than the one he’d inhabited.

  Around the same time that the illustrator was writing his acceptance to the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce, he was also sending out a letter to Congressman Thomas E. Morgan in Washington, urging the speedy withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Indochina. He explained that he wanted his letter identified with Common Cause, which supported cutting off all funds and combat activities by the U.S. forces in Indochina, as well as withdrawing unconditionally, the only contingency the release of American prisoners and an accounting for those missing in action. A week earlier, after Richard Nixon had committed to escalating the Vietnam War, Tom Rockwell had written to his father and Molly, suggesting that the two of them participate in the antiwar lobbying campaign under way that was headed by Abe Ribicoff. The artist needed little urging; he felt as strongly about the indecency of the war as did his son.

  In the middle of Rockwell’s forward-looking efforts on behalf of Common Cause, his popularity continued to be revitalized by the nostalgia wave sweeping a country sick of the present. During the summer, in a nod toward the resurgence of the artist’s reputation, the Saturday Review published a significant article on illustration’s place in American culture. The latest interest in the country’s recent past was encouraging the reissue of Old Broadway musicals, of vintage fashions, and of forgotten comic strips, and it included a bid in Norman Rockwell’s direction. But without the validation of mass culture that Andy Warhol’s ethic had helped promulgate, little room would have been available for such retrospective evaluation. What was kitsch according to The Nation’s art critic Clement Greenberg, and later camp under Warhol, was evolving into “popular culture” in the wake of the Vietnam generation. Each transmutation granted the subsequent genre new credibility, until, upon its maturity, it would be institutionalized as a university discipline. The Brooklyn Museum’s retrospective of Rockwell’s career reflected such institutional imprimaturs.

  In 1973, Ted Kennedy visited with the Rockwells at their home early in the new year, touring the Corner House as well, no doubt Molly’s idea in hopes of securing the Massachusetts senator’s patronage for expanding the collection. Kennedy enjoyed their hospitality as much as the paintings, and he assured them that he would bring his children back to delight in the exhibition just as he had. A few days later, the Rockwells attended an annual celebration at the Waldorf Astoria sponsored by the printing industries of New York, where the illustrator received a prestigious award given in honor of Benjamin Franklin. In the myriad photographs of the event, he appears to be as proud of having Molly at his side, her bright eyes focused on the speakers as if they were intoning Shakespeare, as he was to win the citation.

  Around this time, Erik Erikson asked “Norm” to do him a favor and accept a commission from a sponsor of the Montessori Women Teachers’ Association in Vienna, a group to which Erikson had early ties. The anonymous member had already approached Rockwell about doing a medallion, and the illustrator’s lukewarm reaction had induced him to seek out Erikson, who, amazingly, urged his busy friend to take on the work. If he did so, no one connected with the archives has seen a copy of the medal, implying that Rockwell might have learned to say no, even to Erik Erikson. He and Molly decided around this time to escape the Massachusetts cold by spending a few weeks in Rome with Peter and Cinny, and travel always provided the illustrator with a graceful way to turn down hopefu
l supplicants.

  On May 9, Rockwell’s brother died, “a man commonly known as a misanthrope,” a mutual acquaintance told one of the illustrator’s sons. Rockwell noted the event in his calendar with the terse remark, “Jarvis died in Florida. Dick called and told me.” A few weeks later, the Rockwells traveled to Minneapolis for a Boy Scout ceremony honoring the artist’s lifelong contributions, and, while there, he felt forced to meet with representatives from the Green Giant company, for whom he had painted major ads decades earlier. Representatives from the corporation pleaded with him to grant them an interview for an upcoming issue of the company magazine. Although Rockwell was clearly reluctant to accept yet more demands on his time while dealing with the Boy Scouts, he agreed, requesting that the company limit their talk to the briefest possible time frame.

  As he grew older, Rockwell was finding himself a victim of the years spent establishing his accessibility. By the time he got home from the various business activities this time, there were signs that he would soon be forced to start limiting his appearances. Within a few days of his return from Minneapolis, his calendar includes an entry that hints at the changes taking place in his brain. “Felt lousy can’t remember what else I did,” he noted on May 31; the next day, Dr. Frank Paddock gave him a complete checkup and recommended a major rest. On June 3, he and Molly set off for Little Dix. The Rockwells stayed at the Bay Hotel, a luxury beachfront resort. A note that Molly wrote to Margaret and John Batty, codirectors of the Old Corner House until David Wood took the helm in 1974, makes it clear that even on vacation, Rockwell showed impatience when he was forced to do nothing. All ready to go for a swim, he and Molly were stranded in their room while it rained and thundered, but the lack of lightning irritated her husband, since now there was no good reason why they were prevented from going into the water.

  By the end of August 1973, Rockwell was feeling increasingly “off,” and he was distressed enough to begin recording his bouts of mental confusion on his calendar pages: “all ‘mixed up,’ quit at 5 p.m.” he writes on August 20. One month later, he “went to bed then hospital in bed until the 27th.” The day after he was discharged, he “came out to studio twice but did not work. Took walk to where Erickson used to live. Trying hard to get normal.” A week later, on October 5, he still records “feel lousy.” Trying hard to normalize his declining health, the artist notes on October 11, when he didn’t feel well again, that “after all I am in my 80th year.”

  He and Molly departed for Little Dix again in November, and on their return, in hopes of turning their domestic life into their own again, Molly designed what she called an “escapebo” for the south side of his studio and had it built in short order. The outdoor patio was part escape from the gawking tourists out front, and part gazebo. The closeness of their house to the street not only encouraged too many unannounced visitors, but the constant noise from the traffic irritated the Rockwells increasingly as they aged. The escapebo proved a lifeline to privacy, and Molly and Norman began spending as much time in it as they could, sitting there in the evenings after he had finished work and was ready for a hot toddy, and Molly for her own gin and tonic.

  Rockwell had little opportunity to miss the significance of his eightieth birthday, since newspapers and magazines all over the country anticipated the February date before 1973 was over. Even Peter Rockwell’s latest efforts were, he had announced, studies of his father in honor of his upcoming eightieth birthday. Proud and gratified at the young sculptor’s major exhibition at the Shore Galleries in Boston, Rockwell nonetheless felt too frail and overwhelmed by work to risk the crowds.

  In early 1974, a birthday interview emphasized the amazing routine the elderly painter maintained, devoting most of his seven-day workweek to portraiture. As if shocked at the prices he commands, and as in awe of them as the population will be, he proudly announced that the Franklin Mint will pay him $30,000 for their bicentennial medal, and that the portraits now go for $8,500. Asked why he doesn’t take it easy nowadays, he answered that “I want to be working on a picture and just fall over dead. That’s my ideal.” Generalities about the “hell” of growing old pepper his responses to journalists this next year; and the handwriting of his calendar notes becomes noticeably smaller and tighter. On January 10, he writes “very confused”; the next day, simply, “I am confused.” He and Molly escape to Little Dix at the end of the month, determined to avoid any large birthday celebrations in early February.

  His health had clearly deteriorated by this point, at least judging by the number of midnight trips his quiet, loyal neighbors, Helen and Ernie Hall, made to the hospital with him when he had accumulated water in his lungs. Throughout the years, Rockwell had suffered from bouts of pneumonia, and his lung X rays indicated the presence of emphysema for several decades. He exercised regularly, rarely exhibited shortness of breath, and mouthed his pipe, using it for ritualistic distractions while he worked, far more often than he ever really smoked it. It seems likely that Rockwell’s debt to his Grandfather Hill, the artist whose fascination with detail made the illustrator wonder if such obsessions can be hereditary, extended to his health. After tubercle bacilli first enter the body, they usually remain lodged in the host until death, capable of causing clinical disease at any time. The germs can be activated by stress as well as by other contributors to a weakened immune system. Nancy Rockwell, survivor that she was, nonetheless almost certainly harbored the germ, and in the aftermath of Susie and Samuel Orpen’s deaths, when their children lived with the Rockwells, Norman and Jarvis Rockwell probably filed away the unwanted calling card in their young bodies as well.

  Until his eightieth year, Rockwell’s attempts to outrun his increasing fragility by traveling more and more, finding himself at least temporarily rejuvenated by his trips, had worked fairly well. But this time, during his late January 1974 retreat to Little Dix to escape Stockbridge’s attempts at a birthday celebration, he fell off his bike in an unexplained accident that bore all the marks of a minor stroke. He and Molly had ridden out for their usual afternoon trip, with Molly leading. Only after she arrived back at the hotel and turned, anxiously awaiting what she assumed was her unusually winded husband, did she realize something was wrong. Summoning help from the office, she retraced their path with a staff member in tow, until they came across Rockwell sitting on the side of the road, dazedly surveying the vista. By the time they were back at the hotel, his confusion had passed, and the couple nervously decided he had just taken a tumble and hit his head. But neither one of them really believed that.

  Back at home, Molly arranged for Virginia Loveless, the ex-wife of the Riggs art director, Dave Loveless, to help out at the house. Everyone in the Stockbridge intellectual community knew about Virginia’s cooking, and Norman had begun to lose his appetite. Molly hoped to improve it by arranging for Virginia to cook for the couple on a daily basis, and before long, the warmhearted, discreet woman felt like family to the Rockwells. “Even that year, I knew Norman wasn’t really okay,” Virginia says. “He just wasn’t always on cue, sometimes perfectly fine, other times somehow ‘off.’ ”

  Molly and Norman both refused to acknowledge that there was a problem, however, and in a desperate attempt to get things back to normal, the orderly schoolteacher began to rely more heavily than ever on sticking to the routines she’d set up for them both, aimed at regularizing Norman and securing his good health. Her own lifelong insomnia worsened, and she began to inch toward sharing Norman’s reliance on Miltown, Seconal, and alcohol to keep sleeping through the night.

  When David Wood, a member of St. Paul’s and a well-educated English teacher, took on the position of museum director that year, he quickly became such good friends with the Rockwells that they suggested he move into the little apartment that Mary Rockwell had created upstairs in the South Street house. He agreed, and he paid the Rockwells $150 rent each month. His presence was reassuring to both Norman and Molly, since he tactfully combined the role of family watchman with that of friend an
d tenant.

  During 1975, Rockwell was approached, predictably, by dozens of prominent organizations that hoped he could be induced to represent the upcoming bicentennial for them. But by now, the artist’s color sense had altered dramatically enough that he could no longer keep up the pretense. Until this point, he had insisted all was well: “I remember once when I showed him an original oil we had bought back for the Corner House,” curator David Wood says. “He remarked how dirty it was, and that he was going to take it inside and wash it and then retouch it. I was horrified: his judgment was so off, with the eye problems he was having, that I knew the picture would be ruined. I had to mumble some excuse and get it out of there.”