Norman Rockwell
New York 1894 – Stockbridge, Massachusetts 1978

The Plattsburgers: “Don’t Question Orders, I’m Corporal of this Squad, and You’ll do as I Tell You.”
signed in the upper left Norman Rockwell

grisaille, oil on canvas

22 x 16 inches (56 x 46 cm.)

PROVENANCE: Gift from the Artist to Private Collection, Brookline Massachusetts, and thus by descent in the family until the present time

LITERATURE: Arthur Stanwood Pier, “The Plattsburgers”, The Youth’s Companion, April 26, 1917, reproduced on cover and p. 236
Arthur Stanwood Pier, The Plattsburgers, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1917, frontispiece
Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell A Definitive Catalogue, volume II, The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1986, pp. 819, 823, number S734, illustrated, (as whereabouts unknown)

This important rediscovery of an early work by Norman Rockwell clearly demonstrates the artist’s classical training, virtuosity and sense of American drama. The publication of “The Plattsburgers” in The Youth’s Companion was the first story that Rockwell illustrated that dealt with the entry of the United States into The Great War, declared on April 6, 1917. Works of this type were critical to building enthusiam for a war which was still viewed by many in an isolationist America as a dangerous folly.

Arthur Stanwood Pier’s The Plattsburgers is the story of an undersized and inexperienced college freshman named Ted Ripley who has decided to spend a month of his summer vacation in Plattsburg at a military training camp. There he encounters Richard Greiner a prominent upperclassman who is disdainful of those he views as inferiors in his role as corporal – “the absolute boss of the tent”. The scene Rockwell has chosen to portray is Ripley’s first verbal clash with Greiner. Greiner has found that Ripley’s rifle is filthy and that his trunk has been improperly stowed. This humiliating scene is played out in front of his new bunkmates Charles Gray and Frank Bradford. As the story proceeds Ripley comes to earn the respect of his comrades, while Greiner is forced to accept his own shortcomings. At the end a mutual understanding is achieved and the two part friends.

The Plattsburgers was first published by The Youth’s Companion on April 19, 1917 in a series of installments that ran for nine weeks. Rockwell did fourteen illustrations of the story for the magazine. At this time many writers of juvenile books had their stories first serialized and then published in book form. After an artist finished illustrating a serialization the publisher then chose the best works for the book.¹ As this painting not only served as the cover of the April 26, 1917 issue of The Youth’s Companion, but also from the four selected for the book the frontispiece, it was obviously the one most well received. It was from such seminal works that Rockwell honed his talent for creating poignant scenes of daily life.

¹ Laurie Norton Moffatt, op. cit., pp. 819-833.
² Ibid., p. 580.

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