Imprint: Norman Rockwell’s New England

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 03 November 2013 | 17.35

Caleb Kenna for The New York Times

The view from Rockwell's bedroom at his home in Arlington, Vt. The house is now an inn.

I had driven for three and a half hours from New York so that I could go for a walk. And here I was at last, strolling along River Road in Arlington, Vt. The quiet, unpaved street winds along the banks of the Batten Kill, which is said to be the best trout stream in Vermont. In the distance, the green hills were ablaze with red and orange and offered what seemed like a quintessential New England view.

Connect With Us on Twitter

Follow @nytimestravel for tips, features and photography from all over the globe.

"Freedom From Want" illustration, owned by SEPS. Licensed by Curtis Licensing. All Rights Reserved.

Rockwell painted "Freedom From Want" during his time in Vermont.

Norman Rockwell, who bought a house on this road in 1938, was not what you would call a lover of autumn foliage. His instincts as an artist were firmly figural, and he declined to paint a landscape in the 15 years in which he lived in Vermont. A native New Yorker who was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and began his career in the suburb of New Rochelle, N.Y., he did not farm or garden. Other Vermonters kept stables, but Rockwell, by his own admission, harbored a trembling fear of horses.

When he moved to Arlington, he was in his mid-40s, a celebrated magazine illustrator who was looking to deepen his art. He had painted his share of amusing covers, of freckled schoolboys and their mutts, and he hoped to tap into some truer, more expressive vein of American life. What drew him to New England was not so much the picket-fence tranquillity as the larger idea of it, the reassuring we-the-people symbolism. New England was the birthplace of American democracy, and Rockwell, as it turned out, would update the communitarian ideals articulated by our country's founders.

It was here in Vermont, during World War II, that Rockwell painted his much-heralded "Four Freedoms." Although based on lofty civic principles — freedom to speak and to worship, freedom from fear and from want — the series does not feel didactic. The four paintings have nothing to do with patriots on horseback and the fiery battle for independence. Rather, they portray the civic and familial rituals that connect random people in a town. Using his Vermont neighbors as models, Rockwell posed them in emblematic scenes: attending a town-hall meeting, saying prayers, socializing around a Thanksgiving table, and peeking in on sleeping children.

Other artists have given us other New Englands. It's remarkable how many competing portraits of America emerged from this corner of the country in the first half of the 20th century. Grandma Moses, for one, was a friend of Rockwell's who lived on a farm just across the Vermont-New York border. Grandma, as the whole country once called her, was nothing if not a late bloomer. She took up painting at the age of 76. Working at her bedroom desk, she churned out cheerful views of farm life, nostalgic scenes of snow-covered farmhouses, split-rail fences and horses trotting along dirt roads. She offers a view of New England as a green Arcadia where no one ever comes down with a cold.  

Robert Frost was not quite so peppy. He moved to this part of Vermont in the '20s. His stone house in South Shaftsbury, just a few miles from Rockwell's, is open to the public. The snowy woods, the roads that diverged, the "nothing gold can stay" sense of loss and dissipation: nature provided him with his great subject. He seized on it to create a portrait of Americans as resourceful but emotionally reserved and fond of putting up fences.

Today, Rockwell is associated less with Vermont than with Stockbridge, Mass., the town in the Berkshires where he settled in his later years. Stockbridge was the last place he lived, and it is the home of the Norman Rockwell Museum, which houses the bulk of his artwork and personal papers. In the course of the past decade, I spent many days there. I was writing a biography of Rockwell and contentedly sifting through his letters, datebooks and mounds of bills. Compared with most other artists, he left a very long paper trail.

I hadn't spent much time in Vermont, but it offered biographical rewards of its own. Namely, here one can sleep in the Rockwell bedroom.

Deborah Solomon is the author of "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).


Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Imprint: Norman Rockwell’s New England

Dengan url

http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2013/11/imprint-norman-rockwellas-new-england_3.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Imprint: Norman Rockwell’s New England

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Imprint: Norman Rockwell’s New England

sebagai sumbernya

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar

techieblogger.com Techie Blogger Techie Blogger