“Christmas Carol”

WHEN NORMAN ROCKWELL WAS A BOY, on the upper West Side of Manhattan, his father was given to reading out loud passages from the works of Charles Dickens after supper while the boy sketched the characters. This early exposure to the great nineteenth-century novelist seems to have had a profound effect on Rockwell's subsequent career. In one sense it is true to say that almost all of Rockwell's work can be seen as an extension of the Dickensian tradition. Rockwell has Dickens' flair for caricature and for inventing colorful and picturesque characters. He has the same gift of creating comedy out of everyday situations.

Early in his career Rockwell often painted period pieces that were quite blatantly Dickensian in inspiration. A case in point is this Christmas cover. The man at the left of the group might be Mr. Pickwick himself. The boy is clearly a cousin of Oliver Twist, and it is not difficult to imagine Scrooge confronting the Ghost of Christmas Past in any of the buildings that form the background to this composition.

During the time he was painting period pictures Rockwell built up a large wardrobe of costumes in which he would dress his models. This collection was lost when his studio was destroyed by fire in 1943, and after that he seldom attempted such subjects again.