The Norman Rockwell Album
(1961 - Doubleday)

Something billed as an album of Rockwell's art would seem to be a good thing, but the presentation here, mixing in photographs, rough sketches, and too many black-&-white pictures of color works, pushes this volume way down below other choices. The chapters are: Early Illustrations, POST Covers, From My Sketchbook, Sketch Class, Presidents And Candidates, Illustrations And So on, The Four Freedoms, A Matter Of Opinion, Recent POST Covers, My Studio Today, I Paint The Golden Rule. One attraction here is the artist's own words giving particular commentary about many, many presented pieces. Out of 192 pages, 99 are dominated by the art, 52 of those dedicated each to a large reproduction and the rest, multiple images. The List here recommends Montgomery's NORMAN ROCKWELL, THE BEST OF NORMAN ROCKWELL, 102 FAVORITE PAINTINGS, PICTURES FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, Marling's Taschen NORMAN ROCKWELL, 60-YEAR RETROSPECTIVE, NORMAN ROCKWELL AND THE SATURDAY EVENING POST books, NORMAN ROCKWELL'S WORLD OF SCOUTING, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST NORMAN ROCKWELL BOOK, THE NORMAN ROCKWELL TREASURY and 332 MAGAZINE COVERS before this one, and after those, it contains many repeats, but you will find eight new 'well-presented' pieces, those being one portrait and seven drawing & charcoal pieces.