Art Critic, 1955 Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) Charcoal on paper mounted to board Norman Rockwell once said he envied students who swooned when viewing the Mona Lisa because he never felt such passion. Rockwell may have seen himself as a more analytical artist, such as the one examining a seventeenth-century Dutch painting in his 1955 Art Critic. His original draft depicts a student examining painter Frans Hals' technique in a portrait of a Dutch housewife. In that study, a Dutch landscape on an adjacent wall places the student in a gallery of Dutch artwork. But a recurring Rockwell theme of fantasy and reality exchanging places seems to have taken over, and the painting changed course.
With typical humor, Rockwell replaced the homely woman with one more alluring—based on a Peter Paul Rubens portrait of his wife. The Dutch landscape became a group of Dutch cavaliers, brought to life with animated facial expressions. They are wary and concerned. Is the student getting too close to the painting? Is he being too personal with their gallery colleague? The scene's movement from reality to fantasy refutes the view that Rockwell's work is only photographic.
Odds & Ends: On the student's palette, three-dimensional dollops of paint remind us that we too are standing in a gallery looking at a painting.
Painting for The Saturday Evening Post cover, April 16, 1955 39.5 x 36.25 inches Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1998.4 ©1955 SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN