Description
Poor dust jacket has edge wear, chipping at upper and lower edge of spine, Norman Rockwall illustrated on front and list of authors books on back panel. A mylar dust jacket has been added. The Very Good+ binding is green cloth over boards with blue lettering, fading along edges, rub wear to corners and spine ends, color and black-and-white illustrations throughout. Preface by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Biographical Introduction by Jack Alexander. Writing on front free end paper. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The book measures 12.0″ tall x 8.9″ wide.
Stated “Second Edition 1947”
About the book (from the dust jacket)
This is a great book about a great illustrator – Norman Rockwell, painter to America’s millions. Through its pages of colorful pictures and story, it affords the opportunity of intimate acquaintance with Rockwell the man, for the multitudes who know him only as Rockwell the artist.
The author takes us on visits to the lovely Vermont home where we meet the artist who we are surprised “to discover, is the genial, philosophic human being his famous Saturday Evening Post covers have prepared us to expect.
Best of all, we become welcome guests in a studio where these covers, the “Four Freedoms,” story illustrations, Boy Scout calendars, and advertising pictures, have been created over the years. We are granted the privilege of looking over the artist’s shoulder and of noting the step-by-step procedure that brings them into being. Yes we are even invited to accompany Rock well on some of his field trips, to observe how he studies people and events that motivate his illustrative ideas; how he searches for just the right characters to serve as models; how he rounds up “props’ from town and countryside
We find ourselves chuckling with him as he spins yarns about his amusing encounters with all kinds of people who have figured in one way or another in his amazing career.
For those who are curious to learn about Rockwell’s technical procedures-what kind of paints, brushes, canvases, mediums and varnishes he uses – the book is a gold mine. It might appropriately have been entitled, “How to Become a Successful Illustrator,’ so completely has Rock well’s success story been told.
Artists and laymen all will rejoice in the possession of this volume which, fundamentally, is a mammoth picture book filled with hundreds of Rockwell’s paintings and drawings covering every period of his life’s work to date. His most ardent fans and collectors have a treat in store for them in the drawings made exclusively for this book (88 chapter headings and marginal sketches). Rockwell also has written extensive captions for many of the pictures, in which he describes his reasons and procedures in the execution of his ideas. Especially noteworthy is the section which reproduces ever Post cover painted by Rockwell up to the time this book was made ready for printing-240 of them.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Preface and Jack Alexander’s Biographical Introduction give just the right background for these comments by the artist, and for the text by Arthur Guptill.
