It was when he was looking for black models that his friend the artist Grandma Moses introduced him to the Adams family.

“We knew Grandma Moses because my family would travel around town singing spirituals,” said Pauline Adams, who was 5 years old when Rockwell called her mother and asked if they would come to his studio. “We lived in Cambridge, New York, and my mom was a single mom who didn’t drive, and she couldn’t afford to pay for a taxi to Arlington. He said, ‘I would like to pay the cab fare for you.’”

Pauline and her four older siblings got to skip school, and they arrived with their mother wearing their Sunday best, which he had them change out of. “He explained that he needed us to pretend we were little poor children.”