Norman Rockwell

Described as

American painter and illustrator (1894–1978)

Other names

Norman Perceval Rockwell, Rockwell, Normann Rockwell, Norman Percevel Rockwell

Born

February 3, 1894 · 14 references

Died

November 8, 1978 · 13 references

Born in

New York City · 4 references

Died in

Stockbridge · 3 references

Buried in

Stockbridge Cemetery

Cause of death

pulmonary emphysema

Citizen of

United States

Occupation

painter · 1 reference; illustrator · 2 references; photographer · 3 references

Worked for

United States Office of War Information · 1 reference

Education

Parsons School of Design; Art Students League of New York; Mamaroneck High School; Grand Central School of Art

Genre

figurative art · 1 reference; genre art · 1 reference

Known for

Freedom from Want; Freedom of Speech; Freedom of Worship; Freedom from Fear; Four Freedoms · 1 reference; Rosie the Riveter

Awards

Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977) · 1 reference; Member of the National Academy of Design

Field

painting

Spouse

Molly Punderson; Mary Leete Punderson · 1 reference; Mary Rhodes Barstow · 1 reference; Irene O'Connor · 1 reference

Children

Jarvis Rockwell; Thomas Rockwell · 1 reference

Father

Jarvis Waring Rockwell · 1 reference

Mother

Anne Mary Hill Rockwell · 1 reference

Siblings

Jarvis Waring Rockwell Jr. · 1 reference

Military branch

United States Navy

Wikipedias with a page

53

Wikidata item Q271884 (wikidata.org/wiki/Q271884), public domain (CC0). Copied November 13, 2026.

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, the Four Freedoms series, Saying Grace, and The Problem We All Live With. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life (now Scout Life), calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent, and A Guiding Hand.
Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his surviving works are in public collections. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate more than 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and to paint portraits of presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. His portrait subjects also included Judy Garland. One of his last portraits was of Colonel Sanders in 1973. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts calendars between 1925 and 1976 were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow that were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. He created artwork for advertisements for Coca-Cola, Jell-O, General Motors, Scott Tissue, and other companies. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's oeuvre as an illustrator.
Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, especially The Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life. This has led to the often deprecatory adjective "Rockwellesque". Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious painter" by some contemporary artists, who regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as that was what he called himself.
In his later years, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism for Look magazine. One example of this more serious work is The Problem We All Live With, which dealt with the issue of school racial integration. The painting depicts Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti. This 1964 painting was displayed in the White House when Bridges met with President Barack Obama in 2011.

Born, in its opening lines

February 3, 1894

Died, in its opening lines

November 8, 1978

From the Wikipedia article “Norman Rockwell” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell), by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Copied November 13, 2026; not changed.