About Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell was a master at his craft, who was as much at ease painting kings, statesmen, presidents and movie stars as he was at painting freckled-faced boys, pigtailed girls, kindly old folks and loveable dogs.

Born February 3, 1894, Rockwell sold his first cover to the Curtis Publishing Company in 1916, which began a career spanning almost 60 years. The pale, lean-limbed pipe smoking illustrator worked seven days a week, with only a half-day off for Christmas, to produce canvas images of the nation he loved.

No one captured America like Rockwell. "I paint life as I would like it to be," he once said. "If there was sadness in this creative world of mine, it was a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems."
Norman Rockwell is gone. He was laid to rest beneath a brilliant, sunlit November sky on Veteran's Day 1978. It was a scene worthy of one of his paintings, and perhaps somewhere up there, Norman Rockwell is busily sketching, hoping to beat the deadline on eternity.

The Curtis Center Museum of Norman Rockwell Art - gave us the opportunity to share in that legacy from its opening in 1976 until 1998 when the museum closed its doors. Located across the street from Independence Hall, the museum was housed in the original Curtis Publishing Building. Today, as the Rockwell Gallery Collection, it continues to offer the Web's largest and most comprehensive offering of Norman Rockwell prints, posters and collectibles.

It was to the same building that housed the museum that Norman Rockwell hand carried his cherished paintings to the editors of the Saturday Evening Post. The museum was a living testimonial to the genius that was Norman Rockwell. Within its walls was the world's largest and most complete exhibit of the history and works of this beloved artist. The museum's displays included the entire collection of Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations, as well as a large and varied representation of lithographs, collotypes, prints and sketches.

Visitors were able to view a replica of Norman Rockwell's studio as he left it in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Four Freedoms Theatre treated guests to a unique slide and film presentation that spanned the brilliant career and life of the great artist. It is our great pleasure that visitors from all over the world can still access, appreciate and admire Norman Rockwell's works by the coming to rockwellsite.com.