Norman+Rockwell

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By Taylor He influenced America today by depicting emotions in his illustrations. He also highlighted important real life events in his artwork. Norman Rockwell was born in New York City in 1894. When he was young, he was terrible at sports and other kids at school thought he was skinny and useless. Art was the only thing he was good at. When he was 16, he left school to study art at the Art Students League. The teachers liked his talent and how hard he worked. Later, he decided that his artwork would display life, the way he wanted it to be. When he got older, he illustrated pictures for books, advertisements and covers of magazines. In 1916, he created many Saturday Evening Post covers and he kept making covers for nearly 50 years. Altogether, he made over 317 covers. In the early 1920’s, he made advertisements for the magazines Jell-O, Orange Crush, Ladies Home Journal and LOOK. All the companies were growing in popularity and got requests from people on what should be on the cover. He also made paintings for the Boy Scouts of America calendar. He inspired and influenced people with his fantastic work. They liked the way he showed feelings and emotions coming from his illustrations and how his art told stories of real life events. Norman’s dad read him his favorite book called Charles Dickens. From that point, he started sketching pictures of the different aspects in all his favorite books. One of Norman’s famous illustrations is in Georgia at the Coca Cola Factory. It’s a big painting of people drinking Coca Cola. The people working there were honored and happy because this would attract more people to their company and they would have more business.
 * __ How Did Norman Rockwell Influence America Today? __**

“The Problem We All Live With” is another famous painting. The picture shows Ruby Bridges walking past a wall with guards surrounding her. On the wall are stains from thrown tomatoes. This got people’s attention when they saw it because it was painted during a time when African American’s were treated unequally in the US. He also made illustrations in the famous book Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

So the next time you look at a piece of Norman Rockwell’s art, just think that he was different then everybody else and he showed a lot of emotion in his paintings and drawings. Rockwell’s artwork was unique and showed what was happening in America during his lifetime. Norman Rockwell is a part of history and will always be remembered.

Works Cited Gherman, Beverly. __Norman Rockwell storyteller with a brush__. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2000. Venezia, Mike. __Norman Rockwell (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)__. New York: Children's P (CT), 2000.