by Helen Breen (originally posted in 2017)
Among America’s most beloved 19th century renderings of Thanksgiving Day are Currier & Ives lithographs, Grandma Moses’s paintings, and Lydia Marie Child’s famous poem/song “Over the River and Through the Wood.” In the 20th Century, Norman Rockwell depicted an idealized version of American Thanksgiving. In 1973 the artist established a trust to preserve his artistic legacy that became the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. His studio and its content were added to the property and are visited by thousands every year.
Currier & Ives
Currier & Ives was a tremendously successful printmaking firm, based in New York, in the latter part of the 19th century that catered to the sentimental taste of Victorians. Between Nathaniel Currier’s (1813-1888) artistic talent and his partner James Merritt Ives’s (1824-1895) business acumen, some 7,500 lithographs were produced in the company’s 72 years of operation. The enterprise employed many artists to churn out depictions of idealized American life that were sold inexpensively to adorn the homes of a growing middle class. Country scenes, and particularly winter landscapes, were especially popular.
Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives described their firm as “Publishers of Cheap and Popular Prints.” According to one source, “Artists produced two to three new images every week for 64 years (1834–1895), producing more than a million prints by hand-colored lithography. Small works sold for five to twenty cents each, and large works sold for $1 to $3 apiece.” Currier and Ives’ famous lithograph “Home for Thanksgiving” (shown above) was copied widely, including by Grandma Moses. (Courtesy of springfieldmuseum)
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses (1860-1961) was born Anna Mary Robertson in Greenwich, New York. She was the third of twelve children whose father often bought blank newspaper for the children to draw on. At twelve she became a “hired girl” at local farms. In 1887 she married a farm worker Thomas S. Moses and had ten children, five of whom died at birth. In 1907 the family moved to Eagle Bridge, New York where Grandma Moses spent the rest of her life. After her husband’s death in 1927, she lived with her son on the farm and embroidered pictures in yarn in her spare time. At age 76, because of arthritis, she began to paint often using Currier and Ives prints and scenes from her childhood as inspiration.
In 1938 Louis Caldor, an art collector, “discovered” her work in the window of a Hoosick Falls drugstore. The next day he purchased all of her paintings, and arranged a showing in New York which brought her instantaneous fame. Grandma Moses worked from memory “portraying people actively engaged in farm tasks … as part of the established order of seasonal patterns.” Thanksgiving was one of her favorite motifs, celebrating family reunions, often with turkeys in the background trying to escape their fate.
Lydia Marie Child
Lydia Marie Child (1802-1889) was an American abolitionist, women’s right activist, novelist, and journalist. Yet her most enduring work was her poem “Over the River and Through the Wood” based on her early 19th century memory of visiting her grandparents’ home near the Mystic River in Medford, Massachusetts. The poem, later set to music, was originally published in 1844 in Child’s “Flowers for Children.”
“Over the river, and through the wood, To Grandfather’s house we go; The horse knows the way, To carry the sleigh, Through the white and drifted snow.
“Over the river and through the wood, To Grandfather’s house away!
We would not stop, For doll or top, For ’tis Thanksgiving Day….”
Norman Rockwell
“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.”
So wrote Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), American painter extraordinaire, reflecting back on his life’s work. Recognized for his artistic talents very young, he received his initial commission at age 17. By his early 20s, he was designing the first of 321 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, a relationship that would last for 47 years.
In the late 30s the Rockwells settled in Arlington, Vermont, a perfect perch from which Norman observed the simple charms of small town life, and recreated them in his illustrations. The humor and folksy appeal of these images were dismissed by many critics as “overly sweet” tending towards “an idealistic or sentimentalized portrayal of American life.” Yet the popularity of his drawings for books and catalogs, Boy Scout calendars, and advertisement for products like Coca-Cola, assured his financial success and his popularity with a majority of Americans.
Inspired by President Roosevelt during WWII, the artist created his Four Freedoms series which took seven months to complete. They include Freedom from Want, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom from Fear. The iconic paintings toured the United States in 1943, generating over $130 million for War Bonds. Rockwell also contributed scores of other works supportive of the war effort throughout the conflict.
In the early 50s, Rockwell and his family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His mature work began to focus more “on themes concerning poverty, race, and the Vietnam War.” One year before his death in 1977, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford. The President concluded: “His vivid and affectionate portraits of our country and ourselves have become a beloved part of the American tradition.”
Historic Ipswich 