Studio Muses

First Images of America, 1590

An American Art Series

First and foremost, when reviewing the history of American art, we must remember that there were indigenous people here on this continent who were creating their own. Their works were not on paper or canvas but created in stone drawings, jewelry, ceramics, textiles and the like.

Unfortunately, the early European settlers brought with them what’s often referred to as the “invisible bullet,” that is, disease, which wiped out a large portion of the existing population. It is estimated that between 25% and 50% of the native people died through epidemics. Therefore, except for archaeological finds, most of the first peoples’ works have long disappeared.

What’s more, there was no true “American” art until the republic was formed. Up to that time, art was Euro-centric and the colonists (who were mostly British) had no interest or appreciation of native tribal art. With that in mind, our story will begin with the first European to bring pictures back of the new world.

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It’s rather hard today to imagine a time when communication was strictly limited to word of mouth, written correspondence or pamphlets. But that’s how most things were conveyed in Europe during the 1500s. There was no television, radio, newspapers (as we know them) or of course, the Internet.

But that’s not to say that the 15^th and 16^th centuries weren’t exciting times when it comes to new technology. The biggest invention that literally changed Europe was the printing press. Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450, this new technology would open up doors throughout Europe: from raising the literacy of millions of people to creating religious and political upheavals.

Moreover, explorers were leaving the continent to search for new worlds, bring home treasures (granted, stolen treasures) to the delight of the new “consumer.” Either through the sponsorship of kings and queens or late- to-be-formed trading companies, these explorers would gather ships, men and supplies for their journeys and in tow, there be would scientists, artists and map makers.

One such artist, and most famous, was John White (1540-1593), who joined two expeditions to Roanoke Island. A London gentleman who was both an artist and cartographer, White had ventured to the New World in 1585 with a group of men who had explored North Carolina. Two years later, he joined a second expedition, sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. He would be named governor of the settlement. The group landed on Roanoke Island in May of 1587 and consisted of 90 men, 17 women and 11 children. Their hope was to settle “Virginia.” With full confidence of success, White’s own daughter and son-in-law were part of the group.

Fairly accurate map of Roanoke, 1585,
first voyage, by John White

During his stay, White made a series of watercolor drawings of the native people, fauna and flora. He was preparing a portfolio to take back home to the folks in England to see and understand the New World. Life seemed to go well for some time. His daughter even had a baby, Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born on American soil.

Unfortunately, between supplies being low and tension with the natives, the settlers asked White to return to England and get needed help. So in late 1587, he reluctantly took off his homeland, not knowing then that he would never see any of the settlers again.

My family and I visited Roanoke in 1999, and we witnessed what remains of the “Lost Colony,” as it is called today. There is an eerie feeling about the place, but certainly not as ghostly as it must have been when White returned in 1590, three years later (the war with England and Spain prevented him from doing so earlier). The place was deserted with collapsed buildings and the fort in disarray. Because of bad weather, White and his men could not spend more than a day on the island, but in that time they saw no evidence of violence. The word Croatoans, a peaceful tribe on another island, was carved into one of the posts in the fort. White could only hope that the settlers had sought sanctuary with them.

To this day the Lost Colony is a mystery with suppositions ranging from that they were all captured and done away with by the locals to the settlers assimilated into tribal life. In fact, there is a current study being conducted on DNA matching.

In any event, when White returned and waited to find passage back to the New World, his watercolors were included in a book by scientist Thomas Hariot, who had also traveled with White on a previous journey. In 1590, Theodor De Bry made the engravings. De Bry took several liberties with the drawings, which you can see below. Not believing the natives sat in crouched positions when eating, he redrew the watercolors to show them with their feet outstretched in front of them. I suppose as an artist you were really at the mercy of the engraver at the time.

Here are some of the images from John White’s collection, along with De Bry's engavings. It's interesting to see the differences from one to the other. The entire lot are held under lock and key at the British Museum and only exhibited every decade or so. There are only 70 watercolors in the collection.

White's watercolor

Theodore's De Bry engraving

Notice how the man and woman are sitting at dinner.

De Bry thought it was better to show them eating, European style.

Some believe that the village wasn't
actually like this--too European with
perpendicular lines and such.

And De Bry's engraving is even more suspicious.

Coming up next month: how did the colonial artists break away from the Euro-centric style of painting?

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When I was a child, I was fascinated with two artists: Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney. Interestingly, the art community has never held them in high regard. On the Disney side, my love came the day my hat-designer aunt handed me a book on creating cartoons. I was nine years old and learned that I could occupy myself for hours just by putting pencil to paper. On the Rockwell side, I was intrigued not only by the mastery of the artist’s hand, but by the stories each painting told.

I remember pouring over Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post pictures. For years, critics have complained about him because of his silly, syrupy presentation of an America that never was. As a child I couldn’t care less. What mattered to me was his visual characters, especially the kids and the story being told without a single, written word. I still remember one of my favorites, although it was created when I was only a toddler, called The Girl with a Black Eye, 1954.

You see, I was a tom-boy and got into trouble when I was ten or so. My brothers needed a protector, at least I thought so. I wasn't going to let anyone mess around with them without answering to me first. So of course, I identified with this girl, sitting outside the principal’s office. I also remember those wooden benches, the green filing cabinet, the hairstyle and dress of the school adults and especially the clothes the girl is wearing. It spoke to me, and that was Norman Rockwell’s magic. He may never be regarded as a fine artist (although today he is being appreciated more), but for me and many others, he was a GREAT artist. That’s why I’ve chosen Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) as my first in a series of articles on American artists.

Born at the tail end of the 19th century in 1894, Rockwell entered our world as the second Rockwell son “in a back bedroom of a shabby brownstone,” on New York’s Upper West Side. A major depression, called the Panic of 1893, was underway, and the city was hit hard (by 1900, two-thirds of the city’s population would be living in tenements, or 2.3 million people). While his father, Waring, held a job at a textile company, times weren’t great for this family of four. For several years they moved, going from one cramped apartment to the next. The city would always cause Rockwell some angst as he witnessed a lot of unpleasantries as a youngster. The family would vacation in Vermont, where he and his brother, Jarvis, would enjoy open countryside. He really loved it as he remarked in his memoir,

“In the city we kids delighted to go up on the roof of our apartment house and spit down on the passers-by in the street below. But we never did things like that in the country. The clean air, the green fields, the thousand and one things to do … got somehow into us and changed our personalities as much as the sun changed the color of our skins.

“Maybe as I grew up and found that the world wasn’t the perfectly pleasant place I had thought it to be I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be and so painted only the ideal aspects of it—pictures in which there were no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers, in which, on the contrary, there were only Foxy Grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys [who] fished from logs and got up circuses in the back yard.… The summers I spent in the country as a child became part of this idealized view of life. Those summers seemed blissful, sort of a happy dream. But I wasn’t a country boy, I didn’t really live that kind of life. Except later on in my paintings.”

By the time he was 12, the family finally moved from the city to the suburb of Mamaroneck, NY. Things began to change. Early on, he had an artistic bent, even drawing characters and events from memory. So it’s not surprising that within one year of moving, he would decide to become an illustrator. He quit school and studied full time at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in NYC.

In 1911, at seventeen, he illustrated his first children’s book: Tell Me Why Stories. These illustrations led to other opportunities including the official Boy Scout magazine, Boy’s Life. For five years he drew exclusively kids. The viewpoint was from their perspective: trials of trying to grow up in a grown-up world. He did remarkably well—so much so that by the time he was 18, he was named art director for Boy’s Life. His career was off sailing. He states in his book The Norman Rockwell Album, that from 1912 to 1915, “I was up to my neck in illustrations for young people’s magazines. Besides, Boy’s Life, he also published in several other magazines.

But his biggest break of all came when the Saturday Evening Post accepted one of his cover illustrations. He left his salaried job at Boy’s Life (though maintaining a working relationship for 67 years) and began his 47-year tenure with the Post.

Rockwell was a prolific illustrator. In his lifetime he created over 4,000 original pieces, 322 covers to the Post and 200 covers for others. In his spare time, he was also commissioned to do portraits of the very famous, advertisements, calendars and other projects. He married three times (all teachers), had three boys, worked from sun up to sun down everyday and according to his son, Peter, never took vacations. He was what we call a workaholic.

To give you an example, Rockwell explained in the book, How I Make a Picture, published in 1949, how complicated his working method was:

Brainstorm: sometimes would take days, while he locked himself alone in his room
Rough pencil sketches: working out all the kinks
Hire the models: he had to have the perfect person for the “part”
Secure the costumes and props
Explain to the models how to pose, even playing the part himself to demonstrate
Direct the photographer when, where, how and what to shoot
Create a full detailed sketch (from photograph[s])
Develop a color sketch
Create the final painting

Nothing was ever left to chance. He had it all laid out in his sketch and then moved forward to find the right models, costumes and props—even shipping in what he couldn’t find in his fully-loaded closet.

Rockwell preferred to use ordinary people: neighbors, townspeople, even his sons over professional models. He talks about one boy, probably Billy Payne, who he used in his early years. The boy just couldn’t sit still, so Rockwell paid him 25 cents for every half hour he stopped squirming. I can certainly understand the difficulty. I had a hard time sitting still as a youngster (still do). He also had difficulty with people keeping the same facial expression. I don’t think I could hold a surprised look for too long either. It was about this time that he decided to use photography as a tool. The camera could capture that perfect moment.

Rockwell’s elaborate setups are legendary. In the book, Norman Rockwell Behind the Camera, the author Ron Schick shares Norman’s fascinating ability at staging and direction. For instance, to simulate walking, he’d put books under the models’ shoes or tape up clothing to give the impression of a windblown affect.

Not all of Norman’s paintings were set up in one fell swoop. He would stage one scene or a part of one scene and then use another to fill in the background or miscellaneous props. Saying Grace (below), one of his most popular, was originally planned for Manhattan overlooking Times Square, but instead he moved the “concept” to a train station. The models were photographed separately in the studio, seated at tables and chairs from the Horn & Hardart Automat (a long-lost cafeteria where you would buy your food through coin-operated boxes). The background, a railroad yard, was photographed separately. By the way, the elderly model didn’t live to see herself on the Post cover.

At this point I must admit that I was sorely disappointed when I found out that Rockwell used photographs. I had always wondered how he created such life-like characters. He was a wizard to me. But as I've read more and more about his methods and his commitment to authenticity, I've come to admire his style. His attention to detail and his craft are brilliant and most definitely inspirational.

In the end though, Norman Rockwell was a storyteller, sharing a world with us that he wanted, he visualized (true or not). Even in pictures where things go on that some of us never experience, we can still get the message. For example, in his series: Four Freedoms*, Rockwell used a Thanksgiving dinner to describe, Freedom from Want.

I have never experienced this type of Thanksgiving scene in my life—even as an adult. Nor did Rockwell. His family lived in boarding houses after they moved to Mamaroneck, because his hypochondriac mother lost interest in keeping house. So as you can see in this picture, this was the life, the dinner he hoped for. And even though I haven’t experienced this in my lifetime, the painting still brings me joy. For the same reason, I don’t have to be in the midst of mountains to enjoy an Ansel Adam’s photograph.

Rockwell was clearly a talented director as well. He was able to come up with the visual idea, illustrate the story and then execute it by directing the models, the scenery and the photographers (he worked with several over the years). Then after all that, he painted the idea!

Here are some examples of his setups and resulting paintings.

The Art Critic

Rockwell would rework and rework until he was happy, well sort of. One example is The Art Critic, 1955. He talked about how he sketched the gal in the painting at least 20 times and asked everyone who came in to visit for suggestions. The Art Critic is one of Rockwell’s funniest painting, but obviously one that took far more time than anyone could imagine. Below notice all the attempts he has stacked against the wall.

After his second wife died at the early age of 51, Rockwell, married again a couple of years later. The third Mrs. Rockwell was a retired teacher as well as a liberal and social activist. She encouraged him to leave the Post because they did not want people of color to be seen on their magazine covers as anything but servants. He moved over to Look, a competitor that had more of a political bent. Here is where Rockwell told the national secret of racism.

The Problem We All Live With,1964
In November of 1960, six -year old Ruby Bridges, was escorted by four U.S. Marshals to William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white school in New Orleans.

Rockwell cropped this painting in such a way that all the emphasis is on Ruby. Dressed in white with supplies in hand, she demonstrates her bravery. She was the only black child to enter this school by court-ordered desegregation. The escort was a result of threats she received. Rockwell does a great job of creating tension on canvas with the graffiti and tomato splattered on the wall.

Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very very proud of her.”

One more note on the painting: Notice above the boards used by the models to replicate walking. You can also tell how the artist took a little bit from each gal to create his final Ruby.

Triple Self-Portrait, 1960 To reiterate the point that Rockwell wanted us to see what he wanted to see, notice the image in the mirror in Triple Self-Portrait, 1960, doesn’t necessarily translate over to the painting. Instead we’re viewing his idealized self.

With all the research and wonderful background material I’ve collected on Rockwell’s paintings, I could go on forever. He is a thoroughly fascinating artist. But for now I must end. If you want to learn more, you may try the websites and/or books listed below:

Websites:

Norman Rockwell’s America

November 2009 Vanity Fairarticle “Norman Rockwell’s American Dream”

Norman Rockwell by Robert Rosenblum

Books-

Norman Rockwell BEHIND THE CAMERA by Ron Schick

The Norman Rockwell Album by Norman Rockwell

American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon

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