Norman Rockwell
Pen Pals
Saturday Evening Post cover, January 17, 1920.
The Twenties dawned on Rockwell with no perceptible realization that anything at all was dawning, much less what amounted to a new age for America, a coming of age, and a going away from naivete and innocence. Rockwell was making money. He went to Europe six times, studying, sketching, observing the sameness in human nature, and putting it to work in his covers. He saw no reason to change, or more accurately, he changed for no reason. He lived in New Rochelle, which housed a veritable colony of Post artists. Chief among them was the great Joseph Christian Leyendecker, whose career spanned the years 1899 to 1943. He and his brother, F.X. Leyendecker, had studied in Paris and had proven that the art of illustration was respectable, more respectable in a way than fine art, and that it existed independent of one's position in society: further, that it was one's work that counted, not to whom an artist was married or who his father was.
Charles Dana Gibson also lived in New Rochelle,a nd, using his wife, the beautiful Irene Langhorne from Virginia, as a model, had created the American girl. Gibson went everywhere, followed the rich and with his pen became rich himself.
The Leyendeckers never went out of the house, according to Rockwell, who became Joe Leyendecker's friend as he came under the influence of his art. "I never met Leyendecker," Lorimer once said. "All our business was conducted by phone with his agent." The agent was Rex Beach, the original for Leyendecker's glorification of the American male, the Arrow collar man. Leyendecker was infinitely more sophisticated than Rockwell and through his friendship with Leyendecker, Rockwell began to see there was no sin in being sophisticated, or in being guilelessly sincere - that took real sophistications, Leyendecker told him.
| name | dimensions | investment |
| Pen Pals | 19” x 21" x 12.375" | $16,500 USD |
This bronze statue has a Worldwide Limited Edition of 50 sculptures only.
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