“The commonplaces of America are to me the richest subjects in art.”
- Norman Rockwell

Among Norman Rockwell’s best-known illustrations are heartwarming scenes that capture the essence of American holiday traditions celebrated throughout the year-from Valentine’s Day and Independence Day to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the magic of the Christmas season.

Rockwell’s connection to holiday-inspired art can be traced to his youth, when at the age of fifteen, a parishioner of his family’s church employed his talents for Christmas card designs. As an adult, Rockwell would become a fixture at Hallmark, a company that continues to market his midcentury illustrations for holiday greeting cards. The Saturday Evening Post, which showcased his art for forty-seven years, typically delegated Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s covers to its most talented and popular illustrators. During Rockwell’s first year with the magazine in 1916, his work was featured on a December cover, and subsequently, the front pages of many additional holiday issues were assigned to him. Seasonal rituals and snowy New England landscapes are viewed through the eyes of homecoming veterans and cheerful, intergenerational families who inhabit Rockwell’s artworks.

Throughout his career, Rockwell considered a strong visual story concept was “the first thing and the last ,” no matter the subject. He often told reporters that despite his unending work schedule, he indulged himself by taking a half-day off on Christmas. Though he used his own art to embellish seasonal cards for friends and family, he was not overly sentimental about the holidays. He viewed turkey carving as “a challenge rather than an invitation,” and he once remarked, “I’ve never played Santa Claus in my life. I wouldn’t dare to.” Holiday festivities were prominently featured in Rockwell’s work, and inspired readers to consider how their own experiences reflected, or stood in contrast, to those portrayed in his art.
Home for Christmas (Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas), 1967
Image Caption
About the Artist

Born in New York City in 1894, Norman Rockwell always wanted to be an artist. At age 14, Rockwell enrolled in art classes at The New York School of Art (formerly The Chase School of Art). Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at The National Academy of Design. He soon transferred to The Art Students League, where he studied with Thomas Fogarty and George Bridgman. Fogarty’s instruction in illustration prepared Rockwell for his first commercial commissions. From Bridgman, Rockwell learned the technical skills on which he relied throughout his long career. Learn more…

With over forty million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the nation’s foremost and most widely read author/illustrators for children. This lively exhibition explores the breadth of Brett’s art and the travel experiences that have inspired her many children’s books and characters. Favorite stories, from Gingerbread Friends, The Umbrella, and Honey…Honey to her most recent published book, Cozy, are represented by more than eighty original artworks, as well as reference materials and selections from the artist’s collection of unique objects and artifacts. Artworks from Daisy Comes Home; Gingerbread Baby; Hedgie Blasts Off! The Three Snow Bears; The Animals’ Santa; The Mermaid; Cinders, A Chicken Cinderella; On Noah’s Ark; The Turnip; and The Snowy Nap are among the full-color originals from the artist’s books to be enjoyed. A video interview with Brett, an exhibition audio tour in the artist’s voice, and recorded book readings will be featured in the galleries and online.

Real and Imagined: The Art of Jan Brett
Jan Brett’s global perspective has been inspired by her appreciation for world cultures and her many travel experiences, which have taken her from Arctic Sweden to Namibia, and from Costa Rica to China. The rich traditions and cultures of the countries she visits serve as a starting point for her stories, and the artist’s home is filled with objects and artifacts that she has collected along the way—including a selection that will be shared publicly in this special exhibition.

Brett’s acquisitions have inspired fond memories and are the impetus for the many books that she has written and illustrated throughout her prolific three decade career. Her art invites readers to linger over intricately detailed images filled with expressive characters, natural and seasonal wonders, architectural elements, and uniquely ornate pictorial borders, inspiring engagement, discovery, and a love of reading in children, who are drawn to her warm narratives. Decorative elements of an antique pitcher from Germany appear on a ceramic bowl in her illustrations, and springerle molds from Germany and Switzerland are replicated on endpapers and borders in her joyful Gingerbread books. Freshly shed moose antlers found in the wild in North Sweden appear as an impromptu toboggan in Home for Christmas, reflecting the artist’s interest in repurposing unexpected elements with creativity and imagination.

When Brett was in Botswana, a guide told her of a bird called the honeyguide which uses its call to lure humans to bee’s nests—once humans open the nests, the bird is able to access the wax comb. The honeyguide and the folklore surrounding it inspired the artist’s popular Honey . . . Honey . . . Lion! which is featured in the exhibition. On a bird-watching trip to Namibia, Brett came across the rock hyrax, small rodents known colloquially as dassie that became the stars of The 3 Little Dassies. A set of dolls and samples of cloth from the villages she visited in Namibia inspired the colors and patterns for page borders as well as the traditional clothing in which she dressed her characters.

One of Brett’s favorite books, Berlioz the Bear, was set at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in Stockbridge, MA, where the Norman Rockwell Museum is also located, and the book’s setting drew upon an orchestra tour to Germany and Austria. Berlioz is based upon her husband, musician Joe Hearne, and other characters were inspired by his fellow orchestra members. Additional details were drawn from further travels and Brett’s many visits to museums, which allowed her to seek out and photograph particular decorative elements for her art. In one museum, she recalls discovering the perfect wagon to replicate in her book. Determined to capture as much detail as possible, she photographed the wagon from every perspective, including a birds-eye view from atop her husband’s shoulders. When Brett returned home, she had a scale replica of the blue wagon specially constructed to ensure authenticity in her art. Despite Brett’s love of travel, some of her books are set closer to home. Mossy unfolds by a turtle pond in Hingham, MA, and The Easter Egg is set in her hometown of Norwell. Others are set in “Jan Land,” the colorful made-up world that exists only in the artist’s vivid imagination.

An avid storyteller, Brett enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for the things around her. “The world is so incredibly magnificent,” she has said. “I feel like [I’m discovering] just the tip of the iceberg.” “I used to feel that I could just disappear into a book. So when a child opens [one of my books], I want them to feel like they could just walk right into the forest and know what it feels like and smells like….It’s about making a fantasy place a real place. . . . that’s the key to storytelling.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jan Brett

With over forty one million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the nation’s foremost author illustrators of children’s books. Jan lives in a seacoast town in Massachusetts, close to where she grew up. During the summer her family moves to a home in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts.

As a child, Jan Brett decided to be an illustrator and spent many hours reading and drawing. She says, “I remember the special quiet of rainy days when I felt that I could enter the pages of my beautiful picture books. Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing that the imaginary place I’m drawing really exists. The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real.”

As a student at the Boston Museum School, she spent hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. “It was overwhelming to see the room-size landscapes and towering stone sculptures, and then moments later to refocus on delicately embroidered kimonos and ancient porcelain,” she says. “I’m delighted and surprised when fragments of these beautiful images come back to me in my painting.”

Travel is also a constant inspiration. Together with her husband, Joe Hearne, who is a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Jan visits many different countries where she researches the architecture and costumes that appear in her work. “From cave paintings to Norwegian sleighs, to Japanese gardens, I study the traditions of the many countries I visit and use them as a starting point for my children’s books.”

This exhibition is supported in part by:
Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation
Ruth Krauss Foundation

Many of Rockwell’s Post colors originated from his own imagination or from scenes he had witnessed and remembered; Saying Grace is one exception. In a letter written to Rockwell on November 27, 1950, Mrs. Edward V. Earl recounts her experience at a Horn & Hardart Automat as a possible Post cover idea. The letter describes a plain young woman with a little boy of about five who walked by her with food-laden trays. They took off their coats, hung them up and returned to their table where two men were already seated eating their lunch. Mrs. Earl goes on to write, “To my astonishment, they both folded their hands and bowed their heads to say grace, not just a thank you, but she was saying something of a two minute duration.”

From this narrative, Rockwell choose to change the age of the woman in the construction of his painting. According to the Post, “Norman Rockwell’s little lady is a quiet sermon in paint. Everyone can partake of her deep, old wisdom.”