Norman Rockwell's Neighborhood
A new book offers a revealing look at how the artist created his homey illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post
- By Richard B. Woodward
- Smithsonian magazine, December 2009, Subscribe
If you lived in Arlington, Vermont, in the 1940s, or in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in the '50s, chances are you or someone you knew appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Norman Rockwell's cover illustrations, which adroitly captured the nation's homiest images of itself, were based on the neighbors and surroundings the artist saw every day. He enlisted as models not only his friends and family members but also strangers he met at the bank or at a high-school basketball game.
The camera played a vital, if little-known, role in Rockwell's high fidelity, as Ron Schick's new book, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, makes clear. Schick, who was given access to the entire archive at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge (where a companion exhibit is on view through May 31, 2010), learned that Rockwell first made extensive use of the camera in 1935 while scouting Hannibal, Missouri, for an illustrated volume of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. At first, the artist thought using a camera instead of a pencil was "cheating" and said he was "thoroughly ashamed" of tracing details from projected images. But photography, Schick writes, "transformed Rockwell's work; it instantly unlocked his aesthetic, enabling him to execute whatever he envisioned."
Rockwell would choose and decorate sets, select props, outfit and coach the actors and decide where to place the tripod, though he usually left the pressing of the shutter to an assistant. The resulting photographs, Schick says, "are like Rockwell's paintings come to life. You can explore the decisions he made. It's like watching a slow-motion film of his process." The artist himself appears in some of them, mugging and gesticulating as he acted out the roles ("He was a ham," Schick says), and he was not above banging his fist to elicit a startled expression from his subjects.
In 1958, Rockwell asked Massachusetts State Trooper Richard J. Clemens, 30, who lived a few doors from the artist in Stockbridge ("Mr. Rockwell's dog would wander into my yard"), to pose for a painting that would become a cover illustration called The Runaway.
"I was told to be in my uniform at the Howard Johnson's [restaurant] in Pittsfield," recalls Clemens, now 81 and retired in Clifton Park, New York. Inside, he was introduced to 8-year-old Eddie Locke, whose father and brother Clemens already knew. Rockwell had recruited the boy from the local elementary school to play a plucky young vagabond.
To underscore the lad's meager possessions, Rockwell placed a handkerchief on a stick beneath the stool. For about an hour, Clemens and Locke sat as still as they could while the maestro adjusted their postures ("Keep one arm extended") and expressions ("Look this way and that"). "I was a little kid, but he made it easy on me," says Locke, 59, a landscaper and maintenance worker in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Clarence Barrett, a friend of Rockwell's who worked at a local garage, manned the counter.
But when The Runaway appeared on the cover of the September 20, 1958, Saturday Evening Post, Barrett had been replaced with Rockwell's assistant Don Johnson, who had been photographed separately in the artist's Stockbridge studio. And all references to Howard Johnson's had vanished. When Clemens asked why the restaurant's celebrated 28 flavors of ice cream (listed on the mirror) had been replaced with a blackboard list of daily specials, Rockwell said he "wanted a more rural look, to suggest the kid had gotten a little further out of town. That's the kind of detail he went in for."
Clemens says his police supervisors were "very pleased a Massachusetts trooper had been chosen for a magazine cover." In fact posters of the tableau were soon hanging in law enforcement agencies throughout the country. (To show his appreciation of the force, Rockwell painted a portrait of Clemens in his winter trooper's cap and gave it to the state police, who reproduced it as a Christmas card.)
Locke also recalls posing as a boy awaiting the doctor's needle in Before the Shot, a Rockwell illustration that appeared on the Post's cover of March 15, 1958. The assignment required that he drop his trousers just enough to expose the upper part of his buttocks. "As you might imagine, I got teased about that," Locke says. "I played baseball as a kid, and I pitched. I always claimed that I learned how to throw inside early on."
Richard B. Woodward, a New York City-based arts critic, wrote about Ansel Adams in November's Smithsonian.
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Comments (12)
I found a picture that looks just like this behind a picture my grandparents had, but it looks like it is on cardboard I was wondering what this is at the bottom of it it has 1972 CPC/DAC NR 23in 1 corner. Can anyone tell me what this is the size is 11x14. Thanks for any help anyone can give me on this!
Posted by Bea Moore on October 21,2012 | 07:56 PM
Why does Joe's Diner in Lee MA take claim to be the place the photo was based in? I have been there many times and there're photos all over the walls.
Posted by Sal Murano on August 31,2012 | 09:54 AM
According to Mr. Clemens, the location for the posing was at a Howard Johnson's Restaurant on the Pittsfield/Lennox Road. It's at about 0:45 in the video located at: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Trooper-who-posed-for-Rockwell-s-The-Runaway-3540613.php#media-32075
Posted by Michael Grimler on May 10,2012 | 05:36 PM
I am happy to learn that the face of the counterman in Rockwell's "The Runaway" has finally been correctly identified as my friend, Don Johnson, with whom I attended the New York Institute of Photography in, I believe, 1954. While Don was at his studio in Housatonic MA in the late 1950's he advised me prior to publication that his face would appear in the Rockwell illustration and the likeness was excellent. He eventually re-entered the military after his parents had passed on and he died in a car crash in Germany about 1964-1965 while in the Air Force. Don had always wanted to rejoin the military after his Navy days in WWII and travel through Europe. I'm happy that his wish came true before he died.
Posted by Jack Purdy on March 18,2012 | 10:51 AM
To whom it may concern: In Mr. Rockwell's painting of The Runaway (not the photo) it appears that it was done in my father's restaurant in downtown Boston Ma. since I know the exact decor and the person behind the counter was my father's cook who would work for him on my dad's days off etc. complete with his hair dangling over his forehead and would always talk with a cigarette between his lips and a smerk on his face.
Sincerly, Dr. Nicholas Kanavos Davis
Posted by Dr. Nicholas Kanavos Davis on July 10,2011 | 11:11 AM
I met Richard Clemens(the state trooper in the runaway)many years ago in London, England. We have been friends ever since. Dick did work for General Electrics but his status was much higher than a guard. I was working at Scotland Yard at the time and Dick was in England for a security conference. I have visited his house and you would not find a kinder host. He told me that the original counter man in the painting was about the same age as himself(26), so they put in an older counter man for contrast.
Posted by Bill Sharpe on June 12,2011 | 07:35 PM
I've visited Joe's Diner in Lee, MA, on many occasions, and there are numerous references to the fact that The Runaway was based on Joe's, and that Joe himself was the counterman. Is it possible that the setting was a combination of the two locations (the 'more rural' background DOES look like the inside of Joe's)?
There are even photographs on the wall of the diner with folks who were supposedly the original models in the same pose years later, after the boy was grown.
Posted by Charles Eversole on August 16,2010 | 03:33 PM
My Husband has always told me that the state trooper in the runaway later on became a guard at the General Electric
Posted by Phyllis M Gras on July 22,2010 | 05:08 PM
I have been to the Museum, I own a consignment store and someone has consigned a globe with a plaque that states The Saturday Evening Post Dec 4, 1926 Norman Rockwell Santa at the globe, to sell that is believed to be once owned by Norman Rockwell, Can you tell me if this is valuable, or was given to Mr. Rockwell as a reward.
Posted by Susan Debien-Dean on March 23,2010 | 03:46 PM
I love norman rockwell!
Posted by Cheryl on February 3,2010 | 04:56 PM
My son likes Norman Rockwell so much that he's taken his name for his email address: kevinrockwell@... He's a painter as well although I didn't know it until he was in his late 20s. As his father, I'd tried to watch for his interests so I could encourage him but I'm not that interested in artistic things and I missed the signs completely. I wish I could share his "The Hunger" with you...
Posted by Ken Erickson on December 5,2009 | 02:41 PM
It was good to see that Don Johnson was given credit and his name finally found. He owned and operated Jay Studios in Housatonic, Mass. with my husband Joe Szewczak and myself. Shortly after starting the business Mr. Rockwell contacted us to help him with some photography. This meeting ended up with us working with him for about five years or so. From before I posed for the Saturday Evening Post Cover in 1954 until shortly after 1958. Don was the only person full time with Jay Studio so he spent his days working on family portraits, etc., or exclusively for Mr. Rockwell. Norman Rockwell used the likeness of Don on many ads and paintings.
Posted by Martha L. Szewczak on November 30,2009 | 02:34 PM