Norman Rockwell, Shuffleton’s Barbershop, 1950
Although I’m not a big fan of Norman Rockwell’s artwork, a painting of his caught my eye after becoming the centerpiece of a controversy that has rocked the art world. Rockwell, the longtime cover illustrator of the Saturday Evening Post working from the 1920s to the 1960s, was known for producing images of daily American life—rosy-cheeked folks in church or kids playing baseball—a cornpone vision of America ensconced safely behind white picket fences. The Rockwell artwork at issue, Shuffleton’s Barbershop (1950), is part of the fine art collection of the little-known Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which announced in July 2017, that it would auction the painting. Rockwell meticulously reproduced the myriad details of Shuffleton’s barbershop, but what fixates the eye is the back room of the shop in which an elderly group of men are playing musical instruments bathed in a rich inner light matching the glow from a wood-burning stove. The painting would fit into the oeuvre of a Dutch master, perhaps Jan Steen.
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