A Rockwell portrait - An intimate biography

Donald Walton

Sheed Andrews and McMeel

1978

285 páginas

9h 30m

ISBN-10: 0836266021

In the late 1960's Norman Rockwell seemed as passe as the couples he portrayed sipping a soda from two straws. The old Saturday Evening Post, for which he had painted covers for more than fifty years, had ceased publication, His one man show in his native New York City- a life long dream for Rockwell-had opened at Dannenberg Galleries on upper Madison Avenue. The reviews were scathing. Yet Donald Walton, then an executive with the Franklin Mint, observed an interesting phenomenon: Although the show was a critical bomb, it was a smashing popular success. Most of the paintings at the exhibit were snapped up immediately. It was clear that people wanted sp,ething to remember Rockwell by-for clearly Rockwell had uniquely captured a nostalgic visiion, the America of a bygone day. In the process of working closely with Rockwell over the following months and years Walton came to know him as a far more complex personality than the folk hero America revered. Norman Rockwell has become a symbol of all that is right with America-an unchanging figure with a pipe in his mouth and a paintbrush in his hand. But Donald Walton shares for the first time numerous ancedotes Rockwell has told him about his life and experiences.