Art: The Rembrandt of Punkin Crick

Norman Normal, such was his image: the Rembrandt of Punkin Crick, as one critic rather sourly called him, the folksy poet of a way of American life that slipped away as he set it down. "I do ordinary people in everyday situations," Norman Rockwell once declared, "and that's about all I can do." From the day in 1916 when he walked apprehensively into the offices of the Saturday Evening Post—already a magazine circulating 2 million copies a week—carrying a velvet-wrapped bundle of paintings and sketches to show...