The artist Norman Rockwell moved to Arlington, Vermont in 1939 and lived there with his family until 1953. During that time Rockwell produced some of his best-known work. His neighbors and their children often served as models for his paintings. Rockwell and his work are generating renewed interest and debate. One of his paintings recently sold for more than $46 million.
A recent biography rates his Saturday Evening Post covers and calendars as fine art. But it paints a darker picture of Rockwell himself, as distant, obsessive, a hypochondriac with possible homoerotic tendencies. The models at a recent gathering at the took issue with that.
"That biography put Norman in a different light than we knew him," former model says. "The people I know, the models I knew, never had anything even come close to those insinuations."
"As anybody knows who posed for Norman, it had to be right." - Mary Whalen
Edgerton鈥檚 family and the Rockwells were next door neighbors.
"Their kids and my family, we grew up together," Edgerton says. "We all modeled: my grandmother, my dad, my mom, my sister and myself, my dogs, we all had a chance to model at one time or another."
Ruth Skellie was 11 when Rockwell showed up at her grandparents鈥� farm in his rattletrap car, looking for a freckle-faced red-haired girl who could shoot marbles. He鈥檇 already spoken with her parents. Skellie says he asked her if she had a green and white dress.
"And I said yes," Skellie recalls. "And he said, 鈥楥ould you wear that?鈥� And he said, 鈥業 want you to make sure that your pigtails are still on. With ribbons." Rockwell paid Skellie $5, his standard fee. She says she spent the money on a Mickey Mouse watch.
Bennington Museum curator Jamie Franklin says that Rockwell drew on real-life scenes. But he says there鈥檚 always an element of fiction in Rockwell鈥檚 paintings.
"He captured a reality, but it鈥檚 always a staged reality," Franklin told the standing-room only crowd that turned out to hear Rockwell models鈥� stories or reminisce about their own encounters with Rockwell and his family.
Mary Whalen posed for Rockwell many times. She says he always knew exactly what he wanted. And he always took the time to talk with her and explain the story he wanted the painting to tell. Whalen posed for , a series of vignettes in a single frame. Rockwell had been criticized for an earlier work, , because it didn鈥檛 show the boy saying his prayers at bedtime.
Whalen says he almost made the same mistake in her painting. He called Whalen鈥檚 mother in a panic and said, 'We鈥檝e got to add another picture.' Whalen says, "As anybody knows who posed for Norman, it had to be right."
"And when we got there," Whalen says, "He said, 'Mary, I don鈥檛 know anything about saying prayers. So you go over there and you kneel down as if you know how to say your prayers.' I think it was very indicative of Norman. He listened to his people. He wanted to please people."
Whalen also posed for The Shiner, the . She says Rockwell struggled with that black eye.
"He captured a reality, but it [was] always a staged reality." - Bennington Museum curator Jamie Franklin
"And he was getting a bit frantic -- because as anybody knows who posed for Norman, it had to be right." Whalen recalls.
Finally Rockwell put an ad in the paper and found a boy in Massachusetts with just the shiner he was looking for. He painted the boy, and put his black eye on Whalen.
The models say Rockwell was a workaholic. Melinda Pelham鈥檚 father took many of the photographs that Rockwell liked to work from. She recalls him calling on Christmas to ask her dad to come and work. She says it was the only time he ever said no to the man who turned his neighbors, and their town, into American icons.
