Artist: Norman Rockwell
Title: The Saturday People
Year created: 1973
Medium: Collotype
Edition: 30/200 Hand-Signed & Numbered Limited Edition
Height (inches): 26-3/4
Width (inches): 35-1/4
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is framed.
Includes a certificate of authenticity.
Description of piece:
Norman Rockwell's The Saturday People is a rare limited edition original collotype in color, from the very small limited edition of only 200 impressions. An iconic Rockwell artwork, created from Rockwell's original illustration for the October 1966 edition of McCall's Magazine, it bears the edition number 30/200, in pencil, lower left. The work is hand-signed by the artist, in pencil, lower right.
The Saturday People was created by Rockwell as an original illustration for a story in McCall's which told the tale of a golden-haired thirteen year old named Leslie who thrives on the excitement of her mid-Manhattan world. Leslie, a keen observer of life, has an active imagination, and famous and fantastic figures dance among her private thoughts— and Rockwell's vibrant celebratory artwork features portraits of over thirteen celebrities and other notable personages.
Among the notables who move through Rockwell's image from left to right are Actor David McCallum, NYC Mayor John Lindsay, Soprano Maria Callas, Actor Sean Connery, Pianist Van Cliburn, Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr, Prince Philip of England, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Comedian Jonathan Winters, Composer/Conductor Leonard Bernstein and Actor Tallulah Bankhead.
Other notables— including Rockwell himself, along with his wife Molly in cameo appearance— walk through the artwork from right to left.
The Saturday People comes framed and ready for display in a custom archival gallery style frame in lustrous black wood, with a custom two-layer archival mat. Framed size measures 26-3/4" in height x 35-1/4" width x 3/4" depth.
The work was published in 1973 by Circle Gallery, Ltd., with whom Rockwell first began creating his limited edition artworks in the 1970s. The artwork is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Artist bio:
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) artwork captured scenes from American life and culture, skillfully executed with such minute attention to detail and so realistic that they often resembled photographs rather than paintings. During Rockwell's prodigious career he painted over 300 cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. He also is noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America, during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life (with which he began his career at age 18), annual calendars, and other illustrations.
Norman Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than four thousand original works in his lifetime. Most of his works are either in public collections, or have been destroyed in fire or other misfortunes. Rockwell also was commissioned to illustrate more than forty books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts calendars between 1925 and 1976 (Rockwell was a 1939 recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America), were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow that were published for seventeen years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. He painted six images for Coca-Cola advertising. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's œuvre as an illustrator. In 1969, as a tribute to Rockwell's seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth, officials of Brown & Bigelow and the Boy Scouts of America asked Rockwell to pose in Beyond the Easel, the calendar illustration that year.
Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001. Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties sold for $15.4 million at a 2006 Sotheby's auction. A twelve-city U.S. tour of Rockwell's works took place in 2008. In 2008, Rockwell was named the official state artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The 2013 sale of Saying Grace for $46 million established a new record price for Rockwell art. Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Reading Public Museum and the Church History Museum in 2013–2014.
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