Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers
(1979 - Abbeville Press)

Before giving a critique of this book, I have to caution that you do not want the smaller version of this title that's covered below (it's 4.5-by-4.5-inches) sometimes properly labeled as "Tiny Folio" - the problem is that booksellers frequently don't make the distinction in the title listing and sometimes even incorrectly list the book size in the boilerplate details. I'd have to suggest making a specific effort to have the bookseller confirm that he's offering the oversize edition for sale before making payment. Now with that said, and again observing that the "tiny" version is inferior, this oversize, coffee-table tome is way too large. We're talking 12-by-15-inches and 2 inches thick. I believe there is also a 11-by-13-inch edition, but that would only be slightly more manageable than my small-mammal-killer here. It is 455 pages of which nearly 330 are completely given over to presenting the image from each magazine cover. Let's discuss here that NORMAN ROCKWELL (MONTGOMERY), THE BEST OF NORMAN ROCKWELL, 102 FAVORITE PAINTINGS, PICTURES FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, NORMAN ROCKWELL (MARLING-TASCHEN), A SIXTY YEAR RETROSPECTIVE, NORMAN ROCKWELL'S WORLD OF SCOUTING, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST NORMAN ROCKWELL BOOK and THE NORMAN ROCKWELL TREASURY are all recommended before this one, but clearly Rockwell's association with the Saturday Evening Post magazine forms the heart the man's painted canon. All of those covers have also been gathered in a series of three books entitled NORMAN ROCKWELL AND THE SATURDAY EVENING POST which, because of their managable size, score better than this collection. With that said, it has to be noted that this collection has stripped off of these images the masthead and the other magazine ephermera to make for better representations. I count here 186 instances of this enhancement not presented that way in the better-recommended books - that might entice you to add this to your collection. Add to that eight Rockwell images from earlier magazine covers created before he found his groove with his mainstay (and six interesting prelimnaries used in the creation of some of his iconic paintings). Anyway, each cover is captioned with the magazine & date on which it appeared and a created title. The last few share their pages with some of Christopher Finch's text, which fills them, and 83 more, with a well-received essay on Rockwell and the progression of his career, along with a minor commentary on every piece presented. A not insignificant number of complaints have been seen concerning poor reproduction of Rockwell's paintings here, both in definition and color correctness, and not being an expert, I'd speculate that most of the images presented have been mastered from the magazine covers themselves and not originals. (Let's not forget that a studio fire took many of the paintings from the first half of his career). I don't detect any less reproduction quality than that found in the NORMAN ROCKWELL AND THE SATURDAY EVENING POST books which are just shots of the magazines themeselves.

Norman Rockwell - 332 Magazine Covers *TINY FOLIO*
(1979 - Abbeville Press)

[-BELOW THE LINE-] The book is too small, not even achieving 4.5 by 4.5 inches. You definitely want the larger version, even if it swings the pendulum a bit too far in the other direction. This book doesn't even deliver the promised 332 covers! Most of the text has been removed, along with all of the indivdual commentary on the pieces.