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(More customer reviews)To her string of biographies of famous people, Beverly Gherman has added another winner with Norman Rockwell, Storyteller With A Brush. While it is written for and marketed to young readers, this easy read will inform, delight and inspire anyone of any age with a curiosity about what makes great people tick, and how they got to be great. A passion for his art is an added bonus, as the book is sprinkled generously with Rockwell illustrations. It's also a walk down memory lane for history buffs, for Rockwell did indeed capture the story of American culture and history from the first World War into the late sixties.
Gherman does a great job getting behind the scenes. We learn about Rockwell's childhood in New York City and, in summers, on a farm, and his very early realization that he loved to draw, and had a gift. She treats us to photographs of Rockwell at work, whether in a drawing class sketching a model or working in his own studio. What jumps out is not just Rockwell's innate talent but his tremendously hard work to improve his craft. Equally tenacious was his initiative in bringing his work to market, or, one might say, creating a market for his work. We can feel his powerful ambition as a young illustrator to break into the big times - of which the cover of the Saturday Evening Post was the epitome. We can feel his nervousness and anticipation as he waits in the lobby of that magazine's head office in Philadelphia for an art editor to review the three paintings he had brought with him from New York. Finally, we imagine his joy when they buy his work on the spot and commission additional covers, starting a nearly half century long relationship and the seemingly endless series that became his hallmark.
It is difficult to imagine an artist, throughout his career, spending more time on understanding his subjects than Rockwell. Gherman tells the story of his exploration in 1935 of Mark Twain's hometown, Hannibal, Missouri, to help him prepare to illustrate Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He even bought worn clothes from farmers for pants and overalls, then hired models to wear them while he painted.
We watch as Rockwell decides to leave the Post in 1963, after almost fifty years, to try something new at nearly seventy years of age. He reveled in painting more contemporary, as opposed to historical subjects, now for Look Magazine. Thus we are the beneficiaries of another stream of his sketches and paintings, this one documenting the space program, integration, the fight against poverty and other social issues and developments.
Finally, we respect the admiration his hometown expresses with a parade only a couple of years before his death, and his determination to continue painting as long as possible; and we puzzle at the relative lack of contemporary acclaim art critics bestowed.
Gherman has done reading audiences a great service in presenting the life of this fascinating artist in such a compelling format.
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