About the Artist: Norman Rockwell

“The Street was Never the Same Again” by Norman Rockwell. Detroit Historical Society.

Born Norman Percevel Rockwell in New York City on February 3, 1894, Norman Rockwell knew at the age of 14 that he wanted to be an artist, and began taking classes at The New School of Art. By the age of 16, Rockwell was so intent on pursuing his passion that he dropped out of high school and enrolled at the National Academy of Design. He later transferred to the Art Students League of New York. Upon graduating, Rockwell found immediate work as an illustrator forBoys’ Life magazine.

His piece “The Street was Never the Same Again” is available for custom reproduction to fit your home decor. See this image on RequestAPrint. 

By 1916, a 22-year-old Rockwell, newly married to his first wife, Irene O’Connor, had painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post—the beginning of a 47-year relationship with the iconic American magazine. In all, Rockwell painted 321 covers for the Post. Some of his most iconic covers included the 1927 celebration of Charles Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic. He also worked for other magazines, including Look, which in 1969 featured a Rockwell cover depicting the imprint of Neil Armstrong’s left foot on the surface of the moon after the successful moon landing. In 1920, the Boy Scouts of America featured a Rockwell painting in its calendar. Rockwell continued to paint for the Boy Scouts for the rest of his life.

The 1930s and ’40s proved to be the most fruitful period for Rockwell. In 1930, he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, and they had three sons: Jarvis, Thomas and Peter. The Rockwells relocated to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939, and the new world that greeted Norman offered the perfect material for the artist to draw from. Rockwell’s success stemmed to a large degree from his careful appreciation for everyday American scenes, the warmth of small-town life in particular. Often what he depicted was treated with a certain simple charm and sense of humor. Some critics dismissed him for not having real artistic merit, but Rockwell’s reasons for painting what he did were grounded in the world that was around him. “Maybe as I grew up and found the world wasn’t the perfect place I had thought it to be, I unconsciously decided that if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be, and so painted only the ideal aspects of it,” he once said.

To own your own reproduction of one of Norman Rockwell’s famous pieces visit RequestAPrint for size and pricing on custom features we offer. Click Here. 

(Information credit: biography.com)

Robert Vonnoh: In Flanders Field – Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow

“In Flanders Field – Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow” by Robert Vonnoh. The Butler Institute of American Art

In the development of American Impressionism, Robert Vonnoh is significant both as a painter and as a teacher. He was one of the earliest painters to bring European impressionism to America and his canvases had cool tones and balanced compositions with much capturing of light and atmosphere. He completed more than 500 commissioned portraits, and he had a distinguished teaching career in Boston and Philadelphia.

Vonnoh was born in 1858 in Hartford, Connecticut and raised in Boston. He studied at the Massachusetts Normal Art School in 1875, and attended the Academie Julian in Paris in 1880. There he studied with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. In 1883, he returned to Boston where he taught at the Cowles School in 1884 and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1885.

The piece “In Flanders Field – Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow” is available for reproduction through the RequestAPrint gallery page found here.

Vonnoh studied French Impressionism and was impressed by Claude Monet, whose influence can be seen in his works of colorful landscapes and bright flowers. His painting at this time also demonstrates the dichotomy of many American Impressionists. Some of his works are almost Fauvist, with raw brilliant colors and paint laid on with wide brushes or palette knife, as in his painting “Poppies” in 1888. Other works from about the same time are done almost entirely in neutral tones, as in “Companion of the Studio”, a solid three-dimensional portrait of John C. Pinhey, who was a fellow student at the Julian Academy.

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(Information Credit: gratzgallery.com)

Individual Artist: Mitzura Salgian

Mitzura Salgian is a Fine Artist with a masterful technique and reverence for detail. Her distinctive style is rooted in the Baroque richness of imagery and the Surrealist sense of marvelous to which she was drawn since her early teens. Mitzura is an American artist of Romanian origin. She was educated in her native city of Bucharest, where she received MFA from the Fine Arts Institute.

After moving to the United States, Mitzura began developing her artistic style and perfecting her technique. Her paintings have been widely exhibited in places like the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut; the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; the Society of Illustrators and Museum of American Illustration in New York City; the Trenton City Museum in Trenton, New Jersey; Nina’s Choice Gallery at Bergdorf Goodman, New York City; Bergstrom-Mahler

Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin; the National Arts Club, the Salmagundi Club Galleries and the New York University Washington Square East Galleries, all in New York City; the Attleboro Arts Museum in Attleboro, Massachusetts; the Turtle Bay Museum in Redding, California; the Danville Museum of Fine Arts And History in Danville, Virginia; the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama; the Museum of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas; the World Bank Auditorium in Washington, District of Columbia.

Mitzura’s work is part of the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Recognized in art shows and competitions, Mitzura received medals and awards for her paintings. Among them: the Gold Medal of Honor, Audubon Artists; the Silver Medal of Honor, Allied Artists of America; New Britain Museum of American Art Award for Oil Painting; Best in Show Painting and Utrecht Award of Excellence, 27th Ellarslie Open at Trenton City Museum; Dorothy Barberis Memorial Award and Tamsin L. Holzer Memorial Award, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club; Midyear Show Honorable Mention Award, Butler Institute of American Art; Midamerica Pastel Society Award, Pastel Society of America; 4th Place in Show, Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts; Award of Excellence, Society of Newspaper Design; Certificate of Merit, Society of Illustrators and Museum of American Illustrators.

Mitzura created Editorial and Book Illustrations for clients like The New York Times, Gulf+Western, Games and Health magazines and she was commissioned by major publishers: Random House, Harper-Collins, Ballantine, St Martin’s Press, Scholastic, Bantam, Harlequin, Pocket Books, Dell, Zebra, Thorndike Press.

Among Best-Seller Authors whose book jackets have been illustrated by Mitzura Salgian are: Agatha Christie, John Updike, Eric Lustbader, Anne Perry, Jeffrey Archer, Jude Deveraux, Bryce Courtenay, Liza Cody, Lavyrle Spencer, Paul Theroux, Andrew M. Greeley, Diane Pearson, Iain Pears, Linda Lael Miller, Edward Marston, Ann Cleeves.

As a Designer, Mitzura created original pieces for companies like Lenox and The Bradford Exchange.

Mitzura teaches at Parsons New School for Design – Parsons School of Fashion.

She is a member of the Executive Board of the Allied Artists of America.

To see Mitzura’s collection click the link! http://www.requestaprint.net/artist/gallery.php?gallery_id=25

 

 

Monica Allen-Perin: Individual Artist

Monica Allen Perin, a painter from her youth, began her fine art studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California. She subsequently obtained a Masters degree in the decorative arts (Museum Studies) at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and consecrated her theses to the garden frescoes found in and around Pompeii.

Teaching art history with the University of Maryland she continued to teach studio art and paint watercolors of the Italian country and seaside.

Following a move with her French husband to the South of France in 1998 she expanded her repertoire to include ‘buon fresco’ painting on fresh lime plaster in the manner of the Renaissance, and is currently involved in an important project to add fresco work to the façade of the parish church in Le Pradet, France.

Monica is also a US Navy artist attached to the Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard, Washington D.C. As a ‘combat’ artist she has passed numerous weeks in ex-Yugoslavia and more recently with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean documenting daily life in an operational capacity on board an aircraft carrier or logistics support with a forward deployed unit. Monica has exhibited her watercolors in Italy, the US and in France, in particular in Marseille, Toulon (awarded best in show for watercolors at the Salon des beaux-arts 2002), and most recently in Cannes where she was awarded the silver medal at the salon international des arts and culture.

Monica teaches watercolor painting and fresco from her studio in France.

To see Monica’s work available for reproduction purchase click here

Michael P. Smith (1937-2008)

During his nearly forty-year career, photographer Michael P. Smith (1937-2008) immersed himself in the larger world of New Orleans’s musical culture. At public events, from music festivals and concerts to street parades both mournful and celebratory, Smith was there with his Nikon cameras and, in later years, a tape recorder.

Beyond his public presence, Smith earned the trust of musicians and churchgoers who let him into their private lives. These relationships allowed him to create a photographic record bearing witness to often elusive cultural and spiritual events.

Though documentary in style, his photographs transcend the mere description of their subjects, pushing viewers to consider the cultural diversity of the world around them.

To view his collection of work go to RequestAPrint.net