Saturday, February 9, 2013
The Art Of Norman Rockwell
The Gold Country Girls were lucky enough to be able to go and view American Chronicles : The Art Of Norman Rockwell at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento last week. We didn't expect it to be so crowded! But despite the crowd, it was a fabulous exhibit and I was thrilled to be able to see it.
"Homecoming" is one of the paintings that was on display. I loved seeing it, and knowing that so many of his family and friends ( and also he, himself, of course!) were his models for the painting.
It had been many years since I had visited the Crocker Art Gallery. Last time I was there, it consisted only of the fabulous old, original building shown below - which I LOVE, by the way:
But, he new Teel Family Pavilion, which more than tripled the gallery space, opened in 2010. What a beautiful space it is! And so nice to have all the more room to house exhibits.
Tina took all of these photos for me:
Norman Rockwell's "Triple Self-Portrait" appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on February 13th, 1960.
The only area where you were allowed to take pictures inside was in a corner they had set up so that you could take your own photos in a setting like the one in his painting. I couldn't resist attempting a pose:
Thank you to Tina and Lori both for the few photos we got - I had forgotten my camera . But as I said, no photography was allowed, anyway. (Not that it stopped some of the people, who did what they wanted anyway. We didn't dare to break the rules!)
Here was my second pose:
They had an entire gallery area where on both sides of sort of a long hall, they had hung framed copies of the Saturday Evening Post covers he had done. Maybe all of them; I'm not sure. But I was fascinated. There were some I had never seen.
One of my favorites was a painting Rockwell had signed and given as a gift to Walt Disney. The Disney family had loaned it, I believe, for the exhibit. I REALLY wished I could have gotten a picture of the inscription. I did manage to find an image of it online:
From one great talent to another - how fabulous!
I felt extremely grateful to have had the opportunity, with my sisters, to see some of his great paintings up close.
It was really quite wonderful.
Wish I lived closer!! Too cool!
ReplyDeleteIt was a wonderful experience! I really loved seeing the ancestral tree paintings close-up, and the cute 'going and coming'. Thank you so much for letting us know the exhibit was happening. We had fun. Thrifting after was pretty great too. Love T
ReplyDeleteI have got to go down to Sacramento and see this before it's gone. My girlfriend went and said it was a wonderful exhibit. She was also impressed by the new Pavilion addition.
ReplyDeleteNorman Rockwell is one of our great American artist. He was an American icon. So glad you did a post on it. I need to go see it.
Love the recreation of his triple self portrait. Your hair is beautiful. It's really long. WOW!
love this. did you see antiques road show episode where a lady had posed for him as a child - they were neighbors. he was getting rid of his chair - and her dad got it - and it is worth a lot of money. my dad loved norman rockwell and had many reporductions in his office - particularly - the one of do unto to others......so cool that you got to go. i love that they had it set up for you to take those pictures!
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