Norman Rockwell 1894 - 1978

The American Optical Company, Tillyer Lenses, New Haven, Connecticut, 1929 (commissioned from the artist)
Acquired by the present owner, 2000

Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Norman Rockwell Museum; Old Lyme, Connecticut, Florence Griswold Museum; Kalamazoo, Michigan, Kalamazoo Institute of Art; Mobile, Alabama, Mobile Museum of Art; Fredericksburg, Virginia, Gari Melchers Home and Studio; El Paso, Texas, El Paso Museum of Art; Sandwich, Massachusetts, Heritage Museum and Gardens, Picturing Health: Norman Rockwell and the Art of Illustration, January 2007-September 2012
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Norman Rockwell Museum, The Picture of Health: Norman Rockwell Paintings, November 2003-May 2004, p. 9, illustrated in color p. 8

The Saturday Evening Post, November 9, 1929, advertisement for The American Optical Company, Tillyer Lenses
Mary Moline, Norman Rockwell Encyclopedia: A Chronological Catalog of the Artist's Work 1910-1978, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1979, p. 175
Dr. Donald Robert Stoltz, Marshall Louis Stoltz and William B. Earle, The Advertising World of Norman Rockwell, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1985, illustrated in color p. 197
Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1986, vol. I, no. A800, p. 553

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By the late 1920s, success enabled Norman Rockwell to be selective in accepting advertising work; he only painted advertisements for companies he admired and products he liked. Is It Play for Eyes, Too? appeared in the December 8, 1929 edition of The Saturday Evening Post as an advertisement for the Tillyer Lens Company, a division of American Optical Company. The company commissioned Rockwell to create an advertisement for its new, wide angle lens.

Rockwell’s composition of a young man constructing a model airplane markets the lens to consumers in his characteristically subtle manner: the central figure’s close examination of his model airplane indicates to the viewer that the new, more accurate Tillyer lenses he wears are assisting him in the painstaking endeavor of assembly. Rockwell's composition typifies the early period of his career when he often employed an attic setting in his advertisements. The diagonal line of the garret’s slanting roof provides a perfect frame to direct the viewer’s eye down to the young man’s face and the new eyeglasses that he wears. The small, single light source creates a dramatic play of light against dark that highlights the care with which Rockwell has rendered the details of the scene, while also visually emphasizing the product he was hired to promote.