“The Plumbers”

WHEN ROCKWELL PAINTED THIS cover, he—and the magazine's editors—must have been working on the assumption that most of the Post's readers would find it easier to identify with this pair of plumbers than with the owner of the boudoir in which they find themselves. The owner is absent, of course, but a beribboned Pekinese acts as her surrogate, casting a baleful eye on the proceedings while seeking protection from them near the wastebasket.

The setting tells us a good deal about the room's usual occupant. Note the invitations wedged into the frame of the oval mirror (which, in its Gallic ornateness, gives us a clue to the aspirations of the woman whose face it is its duty to reflect).

Clearly, this room belongs to woman who likes to be seen in society, something of a big wheel in her chosen circle. As for the intruders, they are a well-realized pair of comic characters, a little reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy. No words are needed to communicate their opinion of this environment. The idea of placing likable characters in unlikely surroundings is one that Rockwell used repeatedly. Because of his inventiveness and his careful attention to character and detail, he seldom failed to make it work.