Story Archive

Iconic

Norman Rockwell, who died in 1978 at age 84, is still considered an icon for the way he captured the American experience with his paintings, created for the Saturday Evening Post (more than 300 original cover illustrations over 47 years), the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, Boy’s Life, and many other publications. Multiple U.S. presidents sat for portraits by the idealist American painter. But a new biography paints Rockwell in a different light. He was a high-school dropout. His first wife left him for another man; his second wife apparently committed suicide. He ignored his three sons; “There was a hollowness where the family was supposed to be,” says Jarvis, the eldest. His third wife, the biography says, was “his feminine ideal: an elderly schoolteacher who was unlikely to make sexual demands.” And, it adds, he may have been gay. At the very least, he “had intense emotional relationships with the men and boys who modeled for him,” though there is no evidence of sexual liaisons with any of them. (RC/Albany [N.Y.] Times-Union) ...Yep, that’s the American experience all right.