Norman Percevel Rockwell was an American painter (1894-1978) and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades.
Rockwell began using photography in the 1930’s. He was the kind of artist who had to constantly see what he was sketching so the camera allowed him to freeze faces and exaggerated movements for later reference. He approached each photograph like a director would make a film. He would purchase costumes and props and personally chose people in various New England towns, mainly in Massachusetts.
Rockwell often went to great lengths to find just the perfect location, also. For Santa’s Helper, Rockwell traveled more than 800 miles to Chicago to shoot at Marshall Field, the renowned upscale department store. The company supplied Rockwell with toys and even a clerk to photograph, but he preferred to buy his own toys and spent weeks looking for a model who closely fit his vision of the scene. He chose Sophie Aumand, a waitress from Springfield, MA, to represent exhausted retail clerks everywhere. The painting appeared on the cover of the Post, in December 1947.