Storytelling is a word frequently associated with the work of Norman Rockwell. For nearly 75 years, this beloved artist captured the imagination of American audiences through the warm and witty images he created as commissions for the country’s most prominent publications and companies. Though he is best known for the over 300 works he executed for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell also rendered thousands of illustrations that accompanied the short stories and other works of fiction that filled its pages. Painted in 1940, Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe represents one of the most ambitious and successful of these commissions, a work of extraordinary scale and complexity that testifies to the artist’s unparalleled ability to make the words of an author come alive through his visual interpretation.

Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe originally appeared in the November 2, 1940 issue of The Post alongside Edward W. O’Brien’s short story of the same title, which tells the tale of a horseshoe making contest from the point of view of a local blacksmith’s son. Forging contests like these were common tests of strength and skill in small towns throughout the United States in the early years of the 20^th century, and they provided immense entertainment for the townspeople who came to watch and to place bets on the outcome. In O’Brien’s work, “Pop,” the steady, seasoned blacksmith attempts to prove his abilities against a younger and remarkably strong itinerant blacksmith named McCann, who moved from town to town participating in contests like these and was—up to this point—undefeated.

Here Rockwell depicts what is undoubtedly the climactic moment of O’Brien’s narrative, during which Pop—having fallen behind McCann—begins to gradually overtake his younger rival. The central character describes the scene with near breathless excitement: “I’ll never forget that last hour. And never, I imagine, will any of those who watched…. Both men were lost to everything now but the swing from the forge to the anvil, the heels to be turned and the toes to be welded. Nip and tuck they went, almost heel-and-toe abreast, but when Pop started singing Molly Brannigan, I knew McCann’s dog was as good as dead” (Edward W. O’Brien, “Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe,” The Saturday Evening Post, November 2, 1940, p. 11).  

A gaggle of the town’s denizens have gathered to watch the contest in its final moments. Indeed, the composition depicts an impressive 23 characters, all of which were photographed individually in Rockwell’s Arlington, Vermont studio. Rockwell worked with many of his favorite models of the period to create the scene. Among those who posed for the work is Harvey McKee, the undersheriff of the town of Arlington. Rockwell loved McKee’s expressive face and distinguished mustache. He appears as two separate characters in the present work: the mustachioed figure in the lower left corner looking back at the viewer over his shoulder, and the figure at the right in profile with a cigarette in his mouth but without his characteristic facial hair. Another frequent Rockwell model, Nip Noyes, is also depicted with a bowler hat and cane at right.

Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe also notably includes a self-portrait of the artist as the figure in the hat at the left whose eyes mischievously meet the viewer’s, a compositional decision that suggests that we too are present in the crowded shop, watching these events as they unfold. Rockwell included his own likeness in his works at times not out of vanity but out of necessity (Fig. 1). As he explained of the present work, “When I do a picture with a lot of people, I often run out of models, or perhaps there is some space I wish to fill; then the easiest and cheapest thing to do is to pose myself; so there I am over on the left, wearing a dark-banded hat and looking straight at you” (as quoted in Ron Schick, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, New York, 2009, p. 44).

While photography undoubtedly aided Rockwell in his quest for realistic representation, the artist’s gift for simply reading people cannot be understated when considering a work like Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe. Rockwell combined between 50 and 100 photographs to compose his most ambitious oil paintings, however, Rockwell rarely took these photographs himself. Instead he relied on professional photographers so that he would be free to orchestrate and oversee every detail of pose, prop, and expression. In each of his works, Rockwell strives to achieve authenticity above all, creating scenes that—while often idealized—seem like they could occur in any place and in any time. In Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe, Rockwell directed each of his models to expressively communicate the excitement he would feel if actually a witness to this event, contributing to the sense of eager anticipation that the composition strongly exudes. His masterful understanding of the human form as well as his ability to translate it onto canvas is also demonstrated here, drawing comparisons with masterpieces such as Vulcan's Forge by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, in which the Spanish painter exhibits his ability to depict a complex arrangement of figures in a fully articulated space with extraordinary naturalism (Fig. 2). 

Ultimately, a work like Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe manifests Rockwell’s matchless ability to conjure the elements of a complex narrative—plot, character, and setting—with a single image. Rockwell’s career developed and flourished in tandem with the rise in popularity of American filmmaking. The manner in which Rockwell executed his most ambitious paintings is often compared to film direction, but beyond these similarities in process, Rockwell’s paintings also evoke a quality that is undeniably cinematic. At their core, notes Todd McCarthy, Rockwell’s images, “convey what movies do—pieces of time—moments that present recognizable characters in quickly comprehensible situations rife with comedy, drama, and the things of life” (Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, New York, 2010, p. 205).