Norman Rockwell's preeminence as an illustrator in the public mind springs from a variety of sources, but leading them all was Rockwell's supremacy as a cover artist for The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. Rockwell's illustrations transcended the illustrator's role as provider of graphic adjuncts to some already-written story and achieved another dimension. At the height of his powers his illustrations breathed an atmosphere and a life of their own. Rockwell's artistic eloquence labored with the clay of the prosaic. While from time to time such comforting and cheering appraisals of the American scene as Rockwell mastered are out of critical or artistic fashion, Rockwell's honest portrayals of American life, values, and ideals present an almost unique aspect of truth. Just as Rockwell eschewed painting the sordid, malicious, or squalid in American society, he also eschewed glamorous art, elitist art, and the landscapes made popular by Romanticists...