| Year |
Milestone |
| 1894 |
Norman Perceval Rockwell is born February 3, 1894, in New York City. He becomes interested in art at a young age, and one of his first drawings Rockwell remembers doing was a cardboard recreation of Admiral Dewey's Spanish-American War fleet for childhood naval battles. |
| 1909 |
At age 15, Rockwell begins to attend art school part-time. The following year, he leaves high school to become a full-time art student. |
| 1911 |
By the time he turns 17, Rockwell has published his first freelance illustrations. They accompany boys' adventures stories in children's books and magazines. |
| 1913 |
At 19, Rockwell becomes the first art director for Boy's Life magazine. He paints the cover and inside illustrations for one story in each issue. |
| 1916 |
On May 20, 1916, the first Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover appears: "Mother's Day Off." Norman Rockwell is 22 years old. He will paint for another 60 years and complete another 320 covers. |
| 1916 |
Immediately after selling his two paintings to the Post for $75 each and receiving approval for three sketches, Rockwell telephones Irene O'Connor and proposes. By the end of 1916, he is married, living and working in New Rochelle, New York. |
| 1918 |
Though 17 pounds underweight, Rockwell is determined to join the war effort in Germany. He gulps down doughnuts, water and bananas to pass the doctor's examination and becomes Norman Rockwell, painter and varnisher, third class, U.S. Navy. |
| 1926 |
Rockwell paints the first magazine cover to be reproduced in full-color on the Saturday Evening Post. |
| 1929 |
Rockwell and his wife are divorced. The artist moves his studio to New York City. |
| 1930 |
While on vacation in California, Rockwell meets Mary Barstow and two weeks after their first date, the artist proposes. The couple is married in 1930, moves back to New Rochelle, and has three sons: Jarvis in 1932, Thomas in 1933 and Peter in 1936. |
| 1935 |
The artist visits Hannibal, Missouri, to illustrate Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." |
| 1939 |
Rockwell moves his family into the country setting he had dreamt of as a boy in New York City: a farmhouse in Arlington, Vermont. |
| 1943 |
In the spring of 1943, Rockwell completes what has been called the finest achievement of his career: four paintings titled "The Four Freedoms." After they were printed inside the Post, the U.S. Treasury Department takes the canvases on a national tour, during which 1.2 million Americans view them and spend $132.9 million on war bonds. |
| 1943 |
Two nights after he sends off the last painting in "The Four Freedoms" series, Rockwell's studio burns to the ground. Nearly three decades' accumulation of paintings, pipes, paintbrushes and costumes — plus his easel — are lost. |
| 1943 |
Rockwell watches his neighbors' expressions and gestures during the blaze and makes cartoons of his misfortune for the Post. He then finds a house down the river, converts its barn to a studio, and begins painting again. |
| 1953 |
Deeply troubled by his wife's illness, Rockwell moves to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to be with her while she is treated at the Austen Riggs Center there. |
| 1957 |
Rockwell buys his last house and converts his last studio in Stockbridge. |
| 1959 |
His wife, Mary, dies. Rockwell works harder and longer hours than ever. |
| 1960 |
Rockwell publishes his autobiography — "My Adventures as an Illustrator" — in collaboration with his son, Thomas. |
| 1961 |
Following some advice that he take classes, Rockwell meets and marries a retired school teacher named Molly Punderson. |
| 1963 |
Rockwell ends his string of covers for The Saturday Evening Post with 321. |
| 1964 |
The artist's first illustrations for Look magazine are published, starting an association that will last into the next decade. |
| 1965 |
As one of his many socially and politically significant assignments for Look, Rockwell documents man's travel to the moon. |
| 1969 |
Rockwell agrees to lend some of his paintings to be displayed at the Stockbridge Historical Society's Old Corner House. Word of the original Rockwell exhibit spreads and attendance grows. Eventually, the facility becomes primarily identified as a center for the exhibition of Rockwell's work. |
| 1972 |
A major 60-year retrospective of Rockwell's work is hosted by Bernard Dunenberg Galleries in New York. |
| 1977 |
President Gerald R. Ford awards Norman Rockwell the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing the artist's special talent for creating "vivid and affectionate portraits of our country." |
| 1978 |
The artist dies at 84, on November 8, 1978, and unfinished painting left on his easel. |
| 1988 |
The second edition of Rockwell's autobiography is published. The expanded volume contains additional material by Tom Rockwell which covers the last 20 years of his father's life. |
| 1994 |
The 100th anniversary of Rockwell's birth is celebrated and a grand opening is held for the new 27,000-square-foot Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. |
