Norman Rockwell 1894-1978

By descent in the artist's family (sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 5, 1996, lot 183, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

Stockbridge, Massachusetts, The Norman Rockwell Museum, A Centennial Celebration, November 1994-November 1995

Norman Rockwell, The Norman Rockwell Album, Garden City, New York, 1961, p. 140, illustrated in color p. 141
Thomas S. Buechner, Norman Rockwell: Artist & Illustrator, New York, 1970, illustrated no. 482
Christopher Finch, Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers, New York, 1979, illustrated in color
Mary Moline, Norman Rockwell Encyclopedia: A Chronological Catalog of the Artist's Work (1910-1978), Indianapolis, Indiana, 1979, p. 81, illustrated fig. 1-391
Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1986, no. C471, p. 199, illustrated (as Choir Boy Combing Hair for Easter)

The subject of youth was one of Norman Rockwell's favorite themes throughout his long tenure as the Saturday Evening Post's chief cover artist.  During the 1950s when more than half of his forty-one covers featured children, Rockwell made numerous references to his own childhood in his paintings, as illustrated in The Choirboy, which appeared on the cover of the April 17, 1954 issue of the Post.  Recalling his days in the church choir, Rockwell wrote, "On Sundays in the choir room we roughhoused and shouted and wrestled while donning our cassocks and surplices.  The sexton, poking his head around the door, would yell that it was time for us to enter the church.  Plastering down our cowlicks, pushing, jostling, we'd form two lines.  Then, suddenly, we'd grow quiet and, solemn-faced, march into the church" (The Norman Rockwell Album, p. 140).

Rockwell's painted version of this memory features a choirboy backstage in hurried preparation for an Easter service.  Rockwell uses a paneled archway to frame the setting, and through it we glimpse the proof of last-minute preparations in the scattered clothing, sneakers, and abandoned roller skates.  Such "behind-the-scenes" treatment appears throughout Rockwell's Post covers, a vantage point which allowed him to show the human side of his protagonists with humor and compassion.  Capturing such spontaneity on canvas intrigued Rockwell, and as Thomas S. Buechner noted, "Although he records precise moments, he wants the viewer to know what has just happened or will happen next" (Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective, New York, 1972, p. 114).

Rockwell's Pittsfield neighbor Tom Chappell posed for the choirboy, his "boy-next-door" appeal embodied in his rumpled striped socks, worn-out shoes, and earnest expression.  Chappell typifies the kind of model that Rockwell sought out among family, friends and neighbors, believing they suited his nostalgic vision of childhood and expressed an openness that professional paid models were lacking.  He wrote, "Of course, country people do fit into my kind of picture better than city people.  Their faces are more open, expressive, lacking the cold veneer behind which city people seem to hide.  I guess I have a bad case of the American nostalgia for the clean simple country life as opposed to the complicated world of a city" (My Adventures as an Illustrator, New York, 1994, p. 35).