102 Favorite Paintings By Norman Rockwell
(1978 - Artabras (Crown Publishers))

(by Christopher Finch) In this collection of the artist's work, 72 paintings are given a full page each, faced with a text page of the author's commentary about the context, circumstances and anecdotes surrounding the work. One of those images is unfortunately turned sideways, because of its length. Now you're saying to yourself, "72 ? The title promises 102 !" Indeed, 30 more images are to be inexplicably found jammed in on the last 3 pages. Among the well-presented works, you'll find the young boys & girls, cops & military figures, artisans & workmen, hicks & townies, family-types, vacationers, debutantes, courters, codgers, musicians and puppies that you would expect to in his milieu. Note that the smaller size Abbeville collection entitled NORMAN ROCKWELL (below) is just a subset of the works & commentary presented here. The List recommends getting NORMAN ROCKWELL (by Montgomery) and THE BEST OF NORMAN ROCKWELL, before this one, but if you already have those two, know that you'll find 23 all-new well-presented images here. Then eight of the repeated images are better presented (without the magazine typography), than in the better books.

Norman Rockwell (Abbeville) (1980 - Abbeville Press)

(by Christopher Finch) A near-digest-sized (6x8 inches) clean collection of Rockwell paintings and commentary that is just a subset of the larger-size 102 FAVORITE PAINTINGS BY NORMAN ROCKWELL. If you should purchase that superior book there would be no reason to have this one. Anyway, in this volume, there are only 52 of the full-page paintings with accompaning text. I might mention that there are 6 fold-out pages that are detail-extracts from those pieces that are a bit of an enhancement.