Norman Rockwell: Drawings, 1911–1976

Many of the images are so poorly reproduced that I almost rewrapped and returned this book after flipping through the first 30 or 40 pages : even the drawings seem blurred and out of focus to varying extents, which I find very frustrating. Strangely, after about page 100, this improved for the next hundred or so pages before deteriorating again. As this is put out by the Norman Rockwell Museum, I am particularly disappointed as I presume they possess most of the originals, and his covers are especially easy to reproduce clearly, even for cheap mass market productions. However: the content is fascinating …. I had not been aware how many sketches Rockwell would produce for a cover - often a dozen or more, many of which were highly finished like presentation drawings. Also, one can chart how he refined his designs and the details of a work, even from a very polished drawing to the final painting - a face more subtly defined, an arm rendered more slender, a shoe turned a little inwards, an expression made more provocative : he was truly a master and a perfectionist. The book also has many of his preparatory photos, and it is fascinating how he refined these to arrive at his final image : he would strengthen the jaw line of an athlete to make him look somehow more “all-american”, tweak a nose to render a character more iconic, elongate a body to make the figure appear more “natural”. It really brought home how he used photography as a tool as opposed to simply reproducing a photographic image. Seeing the whole process and then the resulting image, one realises how instrumental he was in creating what we think of as quintessentially “American”, whether it be a small town cop, the girl next door, or the local hero-athlete. So in-spite of the appalling production quality, I kept the book. So sad that a book with such extraordinary content has been diminished by such poor production values.

Quality of paper used does not support the images, resulting in a book that does little to show Rockwell’s undoubted talent as an illustrator.