American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell (74 page)

11
. NR, undated inscription, NRM.

12
.
The Saturday Evening Post
, March 6, 1954, cover.

13
. Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s People
(New York: Harrison House/Harry N. Abrams, 1981), p. 154.

14
. He writes in his autobiography, “If you asked Picasso and me to paint a picture of, say, a woman sitting before a mirror … The two paintings would be totally different, yet both would be of the same woman before the mirror.”

15
. MR, letter to Nancy Barstow, September 8, 1954; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

16
. Madeleine May, “Lenox Gets a Second-Hand Book Shop,”
The Berkshire Eagle
, August 7, 1954.

17
. MR, letter to Nancy Barstow, September 8, 1954; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

18
. Erikson, handwritten draft of a letter to Dr. Robert Knight, August 4, 1954, MS Am 2447, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

19
. MR, letter to Nancy Barstow, September 8, 1954; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

20
.
Breaking Home Ties
achieved a new fame in 2006, when the dramatic story of its whereabouts was revealed. Don Trachte, a cartoonist who befriended Rockwell in Vermont, was the first owner of the painting. He purchased it in 1960, from the Southern Vermont Art Center, for $900. A decade later, Trachte, worried about losing the picture in a divorce settlement, painted a copy that he hung in his living room. He hid the original behind a fake wall in the same room. Three decades passed that way, with the painting unseen in its secret compartment. The copy, in the meantime, circulated in museum exhibitions around the country. Trachte died in 2005, aged eighty-nine. Soon after, his children slid back a paneled wall in the living room and were astounded by what they found. They put the original up for auction and it brought $15.4 million, which remains as of this writing the highest price ever paid for a Rockwell.

21. CRACK-UP (1955)

  
1
. Dr. Robert Knight’s appointment book; courtesy of Adele Boyd.

  
2
. Dr. Knight and Adele Boyd married in February 1956, with the Eriksons as witnesses.

  
3
. Adele Boyd, interview with the author, August 25, 2008.

  
4
. NR, letter to Dr. Knight, January 13, 1955, MS Am 2249, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  
5
. William Gibson, interview with the author, March 18, 2005.

  
6
. Peter Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.

  
7
. Ben Hibbs, letter to NR, January 25, 1955, NRM.

  
8
. Jarvis Rockwell, letter to NR, January 30, 1955, NRM.

  
9
. NR’s 1955 appointment book; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

10
. John Williams (husband of Betty Williams), letter to MR, July 12, 1955, NRM.

11
. Bill Scovill, interview with Annie Pettegrew, July 22, 1988, transcript, NRM.

12
. James D. Breckenridge, two-page memo to Hermann Warner Williams, Jr., director of the Corcoran, January 10, 1955; courtesy of the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

13
. Menu, May 5, 1955, box 49, White House Office, Social Office (A. B. Tolley), Records, 1952–61, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

14
. Thomas Rockwell, interview with the author, December 17, 1999.

15
. MR, undated letter to Dr. Margaret Brenman-Gibson that continued over several days; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

16
. Thomas Rockwell, communication with the author.

17
. NR’s 1955 appointment book; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

18
. Leslie Judd Portner, “Art in Washington,”
The Washington Post
, July 10, 1955, p. E7.

19
. Lyonel Feininger, letter to Mark Tobey, August 13, 1955, collection of the University of Washington Libraries; included in Achim Moeller (ed.),
Years of Friendship: 1944–1956: The Correspondence of Lyonel Feininger and Mark Tobey
(Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz; New York: D.A.P., 2006), p. 206.

20
. NR, letter to Erik Erikson, October 13, 1955; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

21
. Officially, Henry W. Dwight.

22
. NR, letter to Erikson, October 13, 1955; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

23
. Peter Sudarsky, “Rockwell Limbers Up by Sketching City Scenes,”
The
Hartford Courant
, September 4, 1955, p. 2X.

24
. Peter Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.

25
. NR, letter to Erikson, September 8, 1955; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

26
. NR, letter to Erikson, September 29, 1955; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

27
. NR, letter to Erikson, October 13, 1955; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

28
. Ibid.

29
. Receipts, December 1955, NRM.

30
. Jarvis Rockwell, interview with the author, August 24, 2000.

31
. NR, poem written for Thomas Rockwell, March 12, 1956; collection of Thomas Rockwell.

22. YOUNG MAN LUTHER (1957 TO 1959)

  
1
. Erik Erikson, letter to NR, April 12, 1957, bMS AM 2031 (1227), Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  
2
. Linda Zonana and Marion Willmott, Dr. Edgerton Howard’s daughters, conversations with the author, July 2012.

  
3
. NR, letter to Erikson, May 13, 1957; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

  
4
. Erik H. Erikson,
Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), p. 265.

  
5
. Ibid., p. 117.

  
6
. Erikson, letter to NR, April 12, 1957.

  
7
. NR, letter to Erikson, May 13, 1957; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

  
8
. Bill Scovill, interview with Annie Pettegrew, July 22, 1988, transcript, NRM.

  
9
. NR, letter to Erikson, May 13, 1957; courtesy of the Austen Riggs Center.

10
. He bought a camera for Scovill, for $1,500, from Howard S. Babbitt, Jr., a photojournalist in Pittsfield who had taught Scovill photography.

11
. Eddie Locke, interview with the author, April 14, 2005.

12
. Louie Lamone, interview with Annie Pettegrew, July 22, 1988, transcript, NRM.

13
. Don Johnson, one of Rockwell’s assistants, posed for the oily-looking counterman. He is supposedly waiting to take an order.

14
. Dick Clemens, interview with the author, April 14, 2005.

15
. Peter Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.

23. ROCKWELL TELLS HIS LIFE STORY (1959)

  
1
. Ken McCormick, letter to NR, November 29, 1957, NRM.

  
2
. McCormick letter to Hawthorne Daniel, July 14, 1958.

  
3
. Thomas Rockwell, interview with the author, December 17, 1999.

  
4
.
Person to Person
, CBS, February 6, 1959; collection of the Paley Center for Media, New York.

  
5
. “Burriana,”
The New Yorker
, February 28, 1959, p. 20.

  
6
. Vladimir Nabokov,
Pnin
(1953; New York: Vintage International, 1989), p. 96.

  
7
. Cinnie Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.

  
8
. NR, unpublished interview with Thomas Rockwell, July 25, 1959, compact disk, NRM.

  
9
.
My Adventures
, p. 397.

10
. NR, unpublished interview with Thomas Rockwell, 1959, compact disk, NRM.

11
. NR, unpublished interview with Thomas Rockwell, July 25, 1959, compact disk, NRM.

12
. Ibid.

13
. Cinnie Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.

14
. Helen N. Morgan, “The Road to Tanglewood,” self-published brochure, undated (circa 2000), p. 30.

15
. Nancy Barstow, letter to NR, December 3, 1959; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

16
. Margaret Brenman-Gibson, letter to NR, September 8, 1959, NRM.

24. WIDOWHOOD, OR
THE GOLDEN RULE
(1960)

  
1
. Allan Seager, “Another Man’s Wife,”
The Saturday Evening Post
, October 14, 1961, p. 47.

  
2
. Source asked to remain unidentified, e-mail from source to the author, October 4, 2012.

  
3
. NR, letter to Clyde Forsythe, October 20, 1959; courtesy of Marianne Hart.

  
4
. Dr. Anthony F. Philip, interview with the author, January 15, 2010.

  
5
. Clemens Kalischer, interview with the author, December 10, 2012.

  
6
. President Eisenhower, letter to Rockwell, February 9, 1960, NRM.

  
7
. Phoebe-Lou Adams, “Reader’s Choice,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, March 1960, p. 117.

  
8
. Benjamin De Mott,
The Nation
, April 2, 1960, p. 299.

  
9
. Louis Menand, introduction to Dwight Macdonald,
Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain
, edited by John Summers, (New York: New York Review Books, 2011), p. xvii.

10
. Dwight Macdonald, “Masscult and Midcult,”
Partisan Review
, April 1960, pp. 203–33.

11
. The first half of Macdonald’s essay is devoted to “masscult,” the category into which he places Rockwell. But since Rockwell’s
Post
covers obviously deploy the conventions of art, it would have made more sense to label Rockwell’s paintings as “midcult,” along with Thornton Wilder’s
Our Town
and Ernest Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
.

12
. Dwight Macdonald, letter to Kobler, October 20, 1959, MS#730, box 44, folder 1099, Dwight Macdonald Collection, Yale University Libraries. Macdonald initially wrote the article for
The Saturday Evening Post
, after he was asked to contribute to a series called Adventures of the Mind. When he delivered the article, it was a year late. The
Post
asked him to include
The New Yorker
in his list of middlebrow examples. Macdonald took offense at the suggestion. In a letter to John Kobler, the
Post
’s special-assignments editor, on October 20, he protested “I cannot give you the right to tell me what to say.”

13
. Ibid.

14
. Dwight Macdonald, letter to Ben Hibbs, November 9, 1959. Yale University Libraries.

15
. Mary Alcantara, Peggy Best’s daughter, interview with the author, January 24, 2010.

16
. NR, check for ten dollars to Peggy Best, May 1957; check for twenty dollars, June 1957; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.

17
. Mary Alcantara, interview with the author, January 24, 2010.

18
. Jonathan Best, e-mail to the author, February 2, 2010.

19
. NR,
The Norman Rockwell Album
, with an introduction by S. Lane Faison, Jr., and a preface by Kenneth Stuart (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 70.

20
. Mary Alcantara was the model. The painting was reproduced in
The
Berkshire Eagle
on August 6, 1958.

21
. Morgan Bulkeley, “Our Berkshires: Norman Rockwell, Painter of Presidents,”
The Berkshire Eagle
, November 10, 1960, p. 23.

22
. Peter Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.

23
. Erik H. Erikson, “The Golden Rule in the Light of New Insight,” in Erikson,
Insight and Responsibility
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1964), p. 220.

24
. Ibid., p. 242.

25
. The mosaic was donated by the American government in 1985, on the UN’s fortieth anniversary.

26
. Lawrence Friedman,
Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999), p. 300.

27
. Dr. Robert Coles, interview with the author, May 13, 2010.

28
. Linda Zonana and Marion Willmott (Dr. Edgerton Howard’s daughters), interviews with the author, July 2012.

29
. Dr. Philip, interview with the author, May 13, 2010.

30
. “Mrs. Straus Named President of Riggs for Coming Year,”
The Berkshire Eagle
, November 29, 1960, p. 20.

31
. The six drawings, which each measure seventeen by fourteen inches, were presented at the annual board meeting on October 26, 1962.

25. MEET MOLLY (1961)

  
1
. Jonathan Best, e-mail to the author, February 9, 2010.

  
2
. “Mrs. Norman Rockwell,”
The Boston Globe
, December 14, 1969, p. 30A.

  
3
. Nancy Punderson (Molly’s niece), interview with the author, January 31, 2010.

  
4
. She served on the CEEB in 1932, 1935, 1938, and 1944, according to the organization’s annual reports; courtesy of the College Board, New York.

  
5
. Molly Rockwell, interview with the Stockbridge library, oral history project, March 19, 1975, cassette tape; Stockbridge library archives.

  
6
. Gertrude Stein,
Lectures in America
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 211.

  
7
. The 1930 U.S. Census lists the two women at Upton House, at 105 Centre Street in Milton. Later, in the 1940s, they lived at 7 Whitelawn Avenue.

  
8
. Dorothy Kendall was listed in the Stockbridge telephone directory as a resident of Molly Punderson’s cottage from 1942 to 1952.

  
9
. Helen Rice, interview with the Stockbridge library, oral history project, November 27, 1979, cassette tape; Stockbridge library archives.