![Norman Rockwell - Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus (Spelling Bee) [1918]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7019/13966211663_5c5fe3bcd0.jpg)
The 1930s and '40s proved to be the most fruitful period for Rockwell. In 1930, he married Mary Barstow, a schoolteacher, and they had three sons: Jarvis, Thomas and Peter. The Rockwells relocated to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939, and the new world that greeted Norman offered the perfect material for the artist to draw from. Rockwell's success stemmed to a large degree from his careful appreciation for everyday American scenes, the warmth of small-town life in particular. Often what he depicted was treated with a certain simple charm and sense of humour. Some critics dismissed him for not having real artistic merit, but Rockwell's reasons for painting what he did were grounded in the world that was around him. "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," he once said.
[Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge - Oil on board, 76.2 x 76.2 cm]