Norman Rockwell (Montgomery)
(1989 - Magna Books)

(by Elizabeth Miles Montgomery) This is the top-scoring Norman Rockwell collection on The List so far, but, granted, there are many other volumes that I haven't seen yet. A lot of people will like this book for its oversized 10-by-14-inch dimensions and the level of detail that that allows to the presentations. It has 192 pages and the book still seems very comfortable to hold. It seems to gather together a very eclectic group of paintings that cover his illustration, advertising & portrait work, as well as a number of the Saturday Evening Post covers. Among them all seem to be a good number of what people call their "favorites". 155 pages each spotlight a single work or a part of an even larger presentation and only a few more contain multiple images. Included are 17 double-page spreads with only two of them really spoiled by the book's gutter. Note that 51 of the POST magazine covers, less than half of them, are reproduced as the covers themselves, with the logos and other typography. At the end, there is a single page index to the works in page-order. The rest of the book is given over to photographs and text about the life & career of the artist.