STOCKBRIDGE — Have you ever dreamed of a career in art? In comic illustration?

Beginning in the late 1950s, aspiring cartoonists of any age could learn from the best in the business through a mail-order correspondence course. The influential mid-century training program, The Famous Artists Cartoon Course, featured a course curriculum designed to instill both technical fundamentals and the joy of creating art for the masses. All you had to do was pass a talent test and you were on your way to learning from comic legends: Rube Goldberg, Al Capp, Willard Mullin, Milton Caniff, Harry Haenigsen, Gurney Williams, Whitney Darrow Jr., Vigil Partch, Dick Cavalli and Barney Tobey. That’s after a salesman was dispatched to your door. Those who enrolled would soon begin to receive their lessons in the mail.

If you’re curious to know what those lessons looked like, you can see them in person at the Norman Rockwell Museum, where “All for Laughs: The Artists of the Famous Cartoonist Course” is on view through June 15. The exhibition features a selection of over 75 works, most of which are original process and finished works from the course’s legendary founding artists.

The cartoon course was an outgrowth of the Famous Artists School’s commercial and fine art correspondent courses, established in 1948, in Westport, Conn. The original course was founded by the New York Society of Illustrators, principally Albert Dorne and Norman Rockwell. The original course had 12 famous artists associated with it and the price for the three-year course was $200. When the Famous Artists Cartoon Course was offered, beginning in 1956, the cost was $300 — about $3,600 in today’s market.

The artwork in “All for Laughs,” is drawn from the museum’s Permanent Illustration Collection, which acquired more than 5,000 artworks in the collection of the Famous Artists School in 2014. The collection was donated by Magdalen and Robert Livesey, owners of Cortina Learning International, which acquired the school and its courses in 1981. For years prior to the donation, the collection sat in a drafty warehouse in Danbury, Conn.

“Each of the 10 artists selected to create the [Famous Artist Cartoon] course each had their own unique style,” said Chief Curator Stephanie Haboush Plunkett during an interview at the museum.

While the founding artists supplied the artwork for the course curriculum — covered in 24 chapters — they had very little to do with the actual teaching or critiquing of student work. Other cartoonists and illustrators employed by the school corrected and commented on the individual lessons sent in by the students. Once a lesson was complete, the next lesson in the series was sent to the student.

But, the wisdom imparted in the lessons was valuable, no matter if the founding artists were grading individual students or not, Plunkett said. Many of the lessons are on view, offering insight into the process of these legendary cartoonists. Tobey, who had numerous illustrations on the cover of The New Yorker and other top magazines, suggests in one lesson that all cartoon drawing should start in reality and that the drawing be streamlined, simplified and more exaggerated.

“He always talks about having swing in your line,” Plunkett said.

Goldberg, perhaps the best-known of the cartoonists today, emphasized that “types are your business.” In a series of “types,” he illustrates a cleaning woman, waitress, thug and chef — archetypes that were still in use in animated movies in the late 1990s.

While the language in most of the lessons is out of date, such as a chapter on “how to draw pretty girls,” Plunkett said there’s still value in the drawing lessons, which teach the basic fundamentals and later on, refined techniques, that still hold true today.

IF YOU GO

What: “All for Laughs: The Artists of the Famous Cartoonist Course”

Where: Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road, Stockbridge

When: Through June 15

Museum hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Closed Wednesday.