Farm And Fireside Magazine

Five Great Norman Rockwell Cover Illustrations

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The Farm And Fireside magazine cover showcased Norman Rockwell artwork from May 1918 through December 1922. Rockwell illustrations graced the cover of the monthly magazine only five times during those four years.

However, those five were all quality paintings. All showed Rockwell's attention to detail as well as his imaginative story-telling style of painting. The Farm And Fireside covers are all extremely rare finds in the collectible marketplace.

During this time frame (1918 to 1922), Rockwell's art was becoming nationally recognized. His work on magazine covers such as on these was greatly responsible for his growing fame. As such, the demand for his paintings from publishers grew as well.

His subject matter for these covers concentrated mostly on themes interesting to the rural readers of Farm And Fireside. Humorous situations involving children in a country setting were most representative of his work for the magazine. As with The Country Gentleman, almost anything Americana made a good subject for a cover illustration.

Norman Rockwell
Farm And Fireside Magazine Covers List

The complete Norman Rockwell Farm And Fireside covers list only includes five covers. I could not rationalize putting the list with only five items on a separate page.

Links to the individual covers can be clicked on to see the cover and read the accompanying article.

• May 1918 - Go Home (Boy And Dog Going Fishing)
  
  
• April 1919 - First Shave
  
  
• May 1919 - Boy Caught Smoking Pipe
  
  
• October 1919 - Boy and Girl Swinging
  
  
• December 1922 - Santa Napping (The Day After Christmas)
  
  

There are only five, but all are typical Rockwell, fine art and meaningful stories.

About Farm And Fireside,
the Magazine

As you can see from the logo at the top of the page, Farm And Fireside billed itself as "The National Farm Magazine."

Indeed, most of the articles were farm-related. The magazines themselves make interesting reading, even in the absence of a beautiful Norman Rockwell cover.

Farm And Fireside was published by The Crowell Publishing Company, Springfield Ohio, Founded in 1877. The May 1918 issue, Rockwell's first cover, was Volume 42, Issue Number 5.

Subscriptions in 1918 were $.25 per year, three years for $0.60 and five years for $1.00. Single issues were $0.05. This seems like a great deal, doesn't it? The publisher obviously wanted to make the magazine affordable for the subscriber base.

Not Rockwell's First Choice

Farm And Fireside was pretty far down on Rockwell's list of clients. He had arranged a hierarchy of magazines, in his order of preference. He wanted to be published in front of as many eyeballs as possible. The Saturday Evening Post, The Literary Digest, Life and The Country Gentleman were his first four preferences.

Norman Rockwell stated this in his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. But even if he had not conclusively put that in writing, we could still conclude the same by observing how often he was published by each magazine. Rockwell's motivation in this regard was pure and simple: the advancement of his career.

Therefore, these cover ideas and paintings had all been rejected by the major magazines of the day before being offered to Farm And Fireside. One has to wonder why the other publishers decided to pass on these illustrations.

Santa Napping is one of Rockwell's all-time favorite Christmas paintings. Someone really dropped the ball when they passed on that one ...
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