Brass Merchant, 1934 Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) Oil on canvas While other Saturday Evening Post artists were portraying beautiful women gazing out from the cover, Norman Rockwell was painting women engaged in activities giving them dimension and identity beyond beauty or social status. In Brass Merchant, Rockwell's shopper, though elegantly dressed, is driving a hard bargain for a coffee pot. Surrounding the merchant's feet are objects typical of Rockwell's studio inventory- antiques collected to decorate his studio according to the fashion of the day or for use as needed in a painting. As he sat at his drawing table sketching ideas, perhaps Rockwell's eye fell upon his own samovar, suggesting the idea for this cover.
The painting's composition leaves us to guess what the outcome of the bargaining session will be. The two bodies are angled equally, giving neither an advantage, and the pot is squarely in the middle. In addition to the beauty of the symmetry, the painting is so delicately painted-almost as if the medium were watercolor and not oil- that it has a translucence yielding vibrancy and freshness. We feel the characters could walk off the page. Painting for The Saturday Evening Post cover, May 19, 1934 34 x 28 inches Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1978.2 ©1934 SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN