The springboard for this book and accompanying exhibition is the gift of three extraordinary works by Norman Rockwell commissioned by Rock of Ages Corporation, Vermont, as part of a mid-century advertising campaign.

The book is well illustrated, with a number of the artist's less reprinted paintings and rare photos. Specifically, it has 70 main artworks, photographs showing Rockwell working with his sitters, as well as compositional studies, sketches, and a selection of complimentary works by Maxfield Parrish, John Atherton, Abbott Thayer, and others.

An it’s a good read with three interesting and informative essays by Carolyn Bauer, Thomas Denenberg, and Alexander Nemerov, about Rockwell and the artist community in Arlington, illustration and art, and an exploration of Rockwell’s Rock of Ages commission.

From the publisher:

Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont explores how America’s beloved illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) crafted an idealized vision of Vermont—nostalgic, resilient, and mythic—during his most prolific years in Arlington (1939–1953).

In these works, Rockwell offered a nation battered by the Great Depression and World War II a reassuring image of American life: orderly, self-reliant, and picturesque. Through paintings and illustrations, Rockwell captured not simply scenes of New England life, but a deeply rooted ethos—one in which democratic community, moral clarity, and quiet individualism flourished. This book, and the accompanying exhibition, situates Rockwell’s Vermont years within a broader creative milieu, highlighting the Arlington artist circle that included John Atherton (1900–52), Mead Schaeffer (1898-80), Gene Pelham (1909–2004), and others— all informally enticed to Arlington, Vermont. Together, they helped define a cultural moment in which Vermont was mythologized as democracy’s granite-strong refuge. Even Rockwell’s orchestrated friendship with Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860–1961) was part of a wider crafting of New England as both authentic and marketable—where artists and audiences alike found a form of moral anchorage. Featuring three newly acquired Rockwell paintings to Shelburne Museum celebrating Vermont’s granite industry—long regarded as the state’s “backbone”—Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont examines not only the imagery but the careful mythmaking that made Vermont central to Rockwell’s enduring vision of America. Today, Rockwell’s work is housed in major museums across the country, a testament to his profound influence as an artist. 

Accompanies the exhibition Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont, Shelburne Museum, VT, June 20 – October 25, 2026.