Rockwell’s son visits Butler, recalls life with dad

Peter Rockwell will speak at the Butler tonight.

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — When Norman Rockwell was alive, his paintings were generally loved by the common man.

But it was a different story among art experts, who didn’t take seriously his commercial illustrations and magazine covers.

Rockwell was keenly aware of this sharp difference of opinion, according to his son Peter.

“My father would say, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would say, “I do know a lot about art, and I love Norman Rockwell?’ ”

Although he wasn’t alive to see it, Norman Rockwell’s work was rediscovered by the art world in the early ’90s. The passing of time has given the experts a new perspective on Rockwell, who died in 1978 and is now considered a great artist.

Peter Rockwell, the youngest of the iconic painter’s three sons, was at the Butler Institute of American Art on Thursday. He and his wife, Cynthia live in Rome.

Lou Zona, director of the Butler, invited Rockwell to the museum when it bought his father’s “Lincoln the Railsplitter” earlier this year. Rockwell will address an invited gathering at the museum tonight before heading off to museums in Michigan and Texas for other engagements.

Rockwell is a sculptor who has taught on the college level in Rome, where he and his wife have lived since the ’60s. The Butler is planning to mount an exhibition of his work.

He readily recalled many anecdotes of life with his famous father.

Memories

“In my third year of college, I decided to go into sculpture,” said Rockwell, who was an English major. “My father was dead against it. He said, ‘Your oldest brother is a painter. Your other brother is a poet. The only thing that could possibly be less economically favorable would be a sculptor. I was hoping you’d be something nice, like an English professor.’”

Rockwell’s painting style is recognized around the globe — a fact his son knows well.

When he pulls out a credit card in Rome, he is often asked if he is related to Norman Rockwell.

“At the end of World War II, The Saturday Evening Post started coming into Italy, and Italians shaped their impressions of America from the covers my father painted,” Rockwell said.

But the Rockwell name is also known, and revered, in some of the most remote corners of the globe.

Rockwell recalled a 1994 trip to the mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, where he was consulting on the excavation of ancient stone sculptures.

“One morning at tea, I was introduced to a Dr. Naguib. He was dressed in normal Pakistani garb — a long white shirt with white pants — but was wearing a tweed vest, a vestige of the English influence there. When he heard that my last name was Rockwell, he got that look in his eyes that I had seen many times before: ‘Are you Norman Rockwell’s son?’”

Model

As a child, Rockwell posed as a model for his father.

In one painting for a Boy Scouts calendar, Peter repeatedly had to hold an ear of corn to his open mouth, as if ready to take a bite. “My brothers were eating the corn, but I couldn’t. My father kept telling me ‘Don’t worry, there will be corn left. You can eat it later.’ But by the time we got done, there wasn’t any left. I never did get any of that corn.”

Rockwell doesn’t recall his father’s work on “Lincoln the Railsplitter” because he was in Italy. But he remembers what a perfectionist he was, and the painstaking process he used.

“He started with a sketch. Then he made a color sketch. Then he would get models and photograph them, often several models. Then he would make a full-size charcoal drawing. Then he would project the drawing onto a canvas and trace the outline. Then he would start painting.

“And then he would make changes. Sometimes, if he was dissatisfied, he would start all over again.”

Norman Rockwell knew what he wanted and wouldn’t settle for less, even when it came to models.

Peter Rockwell recalled a 1956 trip to New York he made with his father, who needed a model to pose nude for a painting of an old lobster man with a mermaid trapped in his lobster pot.

“When we got to the modeling studio, there were six young women waiting, each holding a photo of themselves in the nude,” recalled Rockwell.

“In the painting, my father carefully covered the mermaid’s breasts with the bars of the lobster pot, but some still called it lurid and pornographic.”

Perfectionist

Rockwell was known as a perfectionist, who could not be rushed.

“After he died, my mother and I were looking through his mail,” his son said. “One letter said, ‘It has been one year since we commissioned this painting. When will it be done?’ And then another: ‘It has been two years ....’ Finally a third: ‘Will you ever finish our painting?’ My father was terrible about deadlines.”

But Rockwell always delivered on time when he was faced with a magazine deadline. Peter recalled a 1960 trip he took to Hyannis Port, Mass., where his father was to sketch President Kennedy.

“When we pulled up to Kennedy’s home, he leaned out the window wearing blue and white striped pajamas and shouted, ‘I’ll be right down.’ I might be one of the few people who has seen Kennedy in his pajamas,” Rockwell said.