Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894 in Harlem, New York City. He started at the Chase Art School at the age of 14, then went on to the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. His first paying job as an artist was at Boys’ Life, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, and his first published cover appeared there in September 1913. He kept working for the Scouts on and off until 1976, a 64-year relationship that produced 471 images (e.g., magazine covers, calendars and guidebooks).
In 1916, Rockwell sold his first cover to The Saturday Evening Post, and he went on to paint 322 of them over 47 years. His best-known work from the war years is the Four Freedoms series of 1943, which was inspired by a speech from Franklin D. Roosevelt. That same year a fire in his studio destroyed many of his paintings, costumes and props. He also did illustrations for stamps, among many other things, so it is no surprise that he shows up in this album.
Rockwell left the Post in 1963 and spent the next ten years at Look magazine, where he took on subjects such as civil rights. One example is The Problem We All Live With from 1964, which shows Ruby Bridges walking to school with federal marshals. Critics dismissed his work for much of his lifetime, though he didn’t mind being called an illustrator, since that is what he called himself. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and died on November 8, 1978 at his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where the Norman Rockwell Museum is still open today.
Note
Norman Rockwell was such a good painter. I like better the works of Andrew and Jaime Wyeth, and the other painters in the Wyeth family. I appreciate less realistic paintings, but tend to prefer realism with a slight emotion (i.e. Wyeth). I particularly like paintings that evoke thought and reflection, not humor and conversation.
Contains 6 spots: own 6 – 6 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Mar 7, 2025
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
Famous Americans
✓ |
2848 |
29c (aug 1994) |
|||
✓ |
2812 |
29c (jan 1994) |
|||
✓ |
2816 |
29c (feb 1994) |
|||
✓ |
2862 |
29c (sep 1994) |
Souvenir Sheet
✓ |
2840 |
$2 (jul 1994) |
American Artists
✓ |
2839 |
29c (jul 1994) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
