Art of the Day

Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978)
Doctor and Doll, 1929
Oil on canvas
Click on image for a larger view.

A girl is Innocence playing in the mud, Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot.
Alan Beck

Twirly said this and “Girl at the Mirror” were her favorite Rockwell works.  Ironically, the can both been seen with 68 of Rockwell’s other oil paintings and all 322 of his Saturday Evening Post covers as part of the touring exhibition, Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People.  The exhibit is currently at the Norman Rockwell Museum until October 21, 2001. The final venue for Pictures for the American People is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, from November 16, 2001 to March 3, 2002.

This particular print was hanging in Dr. Wilson’s office, a place that I frequented as a kid.  There were a couple of Rockwell prints, but this was the main one that I remember.  That’s how I could remember the rooms.  I got my ears looked at in the “doll checkup” room, my physicals for sports were given in the “girl missing teeth” room and if I was really sick I would be studying “boys after a fight” while I waited to see the doctor.

Here are a few other samples of Rockwell’s work:

Courting Couple At Midnight, 1919
No Swimming, 1921
Santa, 1920
Rockwell’s First Saturday Evening Post, 1916
Freedom of Speech, 1943
Freedom From Want, 1943
The Gossips, 1948

for twirl_dawg