Norman Rockwell 1894 - 1978

Mr. and Mrs. J. Buckhout Johnston, by 1972
Mr. and Mrs. George Arden
Alan M. Goffman Fine American Illustrative Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Acquired by the present owner, 1997

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, The Fort Lauderdale Museum of the Arts; Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Museum; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art; San Antonio, Texas, Marion Koogler McNay Institute; San Francisco, California, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Oklahoma Art Center; Indianapolis, Indiana, Indianapolis Museum of Art; Omaha, Nebraska, Joslyn Art Museum; Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective, February 1972-April 1973, illustrated in color p. 88

The Saturday Evening Post, May 27, 1944, illustrated in color on the cover, © SEPS. Licensed by Curtis Licensing. All Rights Reserved
Norman Rockwell, The Norman Rockwell Album, Garden City, New York, 1961, p. 45, illustrated
Thomas Buechner, Norman Rockwell: Artist & Illustrator, New York, 1970, illustrated p. 402
Christopher Finch, Norman Rockwell's America, New York, 1975, illustrated p. 294
Dr. Donald Stoltz and Marshall L. Stoltz, Norman Rockwell and 'The Saturday Evening Post:' The Later Years, 1943-1971, New York, 1976, p. 9, illustrated in color p. 10
Mary Moline, Norman Rockwell's Encyclopedia: A Chronological Catalogue of the Artist's Work, 1910-1978, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1979, p. 69, illustrated, fig. 1-330,
Norman Rockwell, Rockwell on Rockwell: How I Make a Picture, New York, 1979, pp. 24-6, illustrated p. 27
Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1986, vol. I, no. C410, p. 157, illustrated p. 156
Maureen Hart Hennessey and Anne Knutson, Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People, New York, 1999, p. 70, illustrated in color

Norman Rockwell’s Fireman originally appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 27, 1944 and has endured as as quintessential example of the artist's beloved imagery. While seemingly simple in subject and design, the scene contains one of Rockwell's favorite pictorial devices—the picture-within-a-picture. Rockwell enjoyed placing works of art within his own paintings, and he often included references to the act of seeing. He especially enjoyed portraying the idea of paintings hanging in museums and galleries coming to life on the walls. This recurring theme provided the type of visual game Rockwell loved to present his viewers.

Rockwell’s subject here is a portrait of a fireman, hung on the wall of an unknown home or gallery in an ornate gilded frame decorated with various objects associated with the firefighting profession. Indeed it was this frame, which Rockwell found while searching for props in an old junk shop, that served as the inspiration for this work. After purchasing the frame for $1, he later recalled that, “It was empty. I felt I had to fill it. So I painted this cover, using the frame, and then put the painting in the frame. So, you see, the frame’s in the picture, and the picture’s in the frame” (Norman Rockwell, The Norman Rockwell Album, Garden City, New York, 1961, p. 45)

Like all his most ambitious compositions, Rockwell worked from a unique combination of photography and his own imagination to create Fireman. Encouraged by a younger generation of illustrators that included Steven Dohanos and John Falter, Rockwell similarly began to use photography to assist in composing his paintings in 1937. He typically started his process by sketching the scene as he imagined it. Only after painstakingly collecting the appropriate props, choosing his desired models and scouting locations would photography sessions begin in his studio. The manner in which Rockwell utilized photography in his process is often compared to film direction as he rarely took these photographs himself, instead relying on professional photographers so that he would be free to orchestrate and oversee every detail of pose, expression and prop. “I feel that I get  more spontaneous expression and a wider choice of expressions with the assistance of the camera,” he once articulated of photography, “and I save a lot of wear and tear on myself and the model” (Rockwell on Rockwell: How I Make a Picture, New York, 1979, p. 92).

Painted several years after Rockwell began to incorporate photography into his technical process, Fireman demonstrates the artist’s ability to render even the minutest details of a scene with near-photographic realism, as well as his eye for solid draftsmanship. The composition—primarily based on a grid of perpendicular horizontal and vertical lines—is expertly organized to achieve visual balance. The geometric plane created by the striped wallpaper and ledge contrasts with the florid embellishments of the frame to prevent the scene from becoming overwhelmed by too many details. Rockwell’s seemingly limitless imagination allows Fireman to transcend pure portraiture. He places a still-smoldering cigar left by an unknown visitor on the mantel below the painting. The smoke wafts up in the center of the composition, directly in front of the subject’s face so that he cannot help but react to its presence. Entirely forgetting the dignified pose he was previously adopting, the fireman looks humorously affronted, injecting what should be a formal portrait with classic Rockwellian humor.