Non-Indian Residents of Stockbridge, MA: Norman Rockwell

As one of America's most famous painters ever, the criticism against Norman Rockwell was that he was more of an illustrator than an artist. Not only did he understand that criticism, but he struggled with it.

Rockwell began his career before television and even before color photography. At that time, magazines were the dominant visual entertainment medium and talented people like Norman Rockwell were in demand as illustrators. For many years, Rockwell - a native of New York City - was employed by the Boy Scouts and their magazine Boys' Life and by The Saturday Evening Post, for which he illustrated 321 covers.

While living in Arlington, Vermont, Rockwell's second wife, Mary, had a rather strange episode of "screaming and crying" that, according to Rockwell's most recent biographer, Deborah Solomon (2013, 269-270), had something to do with feelings she had for the family doctor. It was that same doctor, Solomon tells us, who thought Mrs. Rockwell "needed to spend some time drying out at a retreat, and he referred her to the Austen Riggs Center, a small psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts"(270).



Norman Rockwell sorely missed his wife - not just as a wife, but she also informally managed his studio - and he also worried about the gossip going around town that his wife had a crush on the doctor. To make a long story short, Norman and his sons moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to be with their wife and mother. They bought a house near the hospital campus in 1954.

The artist himself suffered from depression. In researching her book, Deborah Solomon gained access to some of Mr. Rockwell's medical records, including a letter that his psychotherapist, Erik Erikson, wrote to a colleague who was treating Mrs. Rockwell. Norman had been invited on a trip to Europe over the summer and Erikson tried to tell Mary Rockwell's doctor to let him make the trip without her. As Solomon puts it "Rockwell was tethered to an alcoholic whose drinking made her petulant and critical of his work." He couldn't take it.

In addition to the emotional toll, the therapy and hospitalizations were expensive. So - in order to pay the bills - the famous artist grudgingly took on advertising work, Solomon says, "including a campaign for Kellogg's Corn Flakes"(291). The more that money was an issue for him, the less art there was in Rockwell's work.

As much as Mary Rockwell's death in 1959 was painful for her husband, he married again. And his third wife, Molly, was more supportive of his work, encouraging him to leave the constricting Saturday Evening Post to work for Look magazine, where he had the opportunity to deal with topics like civil rights and space exploration.

In 1972 several Stockbridge Indians from Wisconsin - led by Dorothy Davids and her sister, Bernice Miller - made the trip to Stockbridge, Massachusetts where they were invited to a party at the Rockwells' house. In an e-mail sent to me about ten years ago, Dot Davids reported that they really liked Molly Rockwell a lot. It seems their impression of the artist himself was that he was sincere but not very outgoing. Nevertheless, at the time he had started a painting that depicted Konkapot and John Sergeant sitting in Sergeant's study. So you can imagine how excited Norman Rockwell was to learn that one of his Native guests, Tina Williams, was a direct descendant of Konkapot!

With many accomplishments and honors, Norman Rockwell died in 1978. However, the painting of Konkapot and John Sergeant was never finished.

 

Printed Source:

Solomon, Deborah. American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell. 2013.

 

Links:

The Norman Rockwell Museum (at Stockbridge, Massachusetts)

The Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont

Norman Rockwell page on Biography.com

Norman Rockwell archives at the Saturday Evening Post

Online Smithsonian article about Rockwell