Michele H. Bogart
Notes on Illustrators of Light: Rockwell, Wyeth, and Parrish from the Edison Mazda Collection
I am no collector, but have written on commercial art from this period, I am a print advertising aficionado, and at one point bought a print of a Norman Rockwell advertisement for Edison Mazda lightbulbs. Thus, when I learned that the Norman Rockwell Museum was mounting an exhibition of paintings executed for the advertising campaign for Edison Mazda (which was a division of the General Electric Company), I had to visit. What follows are some pictures and thoughts about aspects of the show’s importance.
Illustrators of Light: Rockwell, Wyeth, and Parrish from the Edison Mazda Collection, curated by Chief Curator and Deputy Director Stephanie Plunkett, is a single gallery of paintings primarily by Rockwell, but also includes art by famed illustrators N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Dean Cornwell, Stanley Arthurs, Worth Brehm, and Charles Chambers. The show also includes many of the print advertisements for which the paintings were rendered, and a few items of ephemera, including the boxes for some of the lightbulbs. The works date primarily from the early 1920s, so the show is very focused. The paintings are on loan from GE Aerospace, and as I’ll discuss later, it’s kind of a miracle that they exist, much less all assembled here. Stephanie Plunkett’s labels are outstanding and tell us much about the paintings, so I am trying not to duplicate her material which you can read for yourselves in the museum, but rather to draw out other elements.
Advertising light bulbs in a new light
Dean Cornwall’s calendar illustration for Edison Mazda is a late one, completed in 1940 (Fig. 1). But Plunkett points out that although Edison had pioneered his tungsten bulb in 1879, only about half of America’s households were electrified even as late as 1930. From Edison Mazda’s standpoint, there was work to be done, and advertising was key to developing brand awareness. The Norman Rockwell Museum’s show includes many of the full-page print advertisements for popular magazines, for which the paintings were rendered, so I want to start with them.
Fig. 1. Dean Cornwell (1892-1960), Lighting the First Incandescent Lamp, Edison’s Laboratory, Menlo Park, New Jersey, 1940, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
“Edison and others gather at his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory on New Year’s Eve of 1879 when a carbon-filament bulb was lit in a public demonstration of his most famous invention—the first practical electric incandescent lamp. To the audience’s amazement, the bulb burned more steadily than gaslight and gave a softer light than the electric arc lamps that were common at the time….In 1909, the Edison Mazda Lamp Company introduced a tungsten filament that was brighter and longer lasting than the carbonized thread in other bulbs. A standardized threaded base that is still used today was also an innovative feature.” This is the last technical description I will provide, and it’s cribbed from the label! Paul Israel, an expert on Edison, did a great short talk on the painting.
The advertisement’s effectiveness in imprinting brand awareness was a goal that depended on being more than the sum of its parts. Those components included eye-grabbing pictures (to be discussed later), which dominated the page, but also texts, logos, and the image of the package (so that customers would recognize them in the store), artfully arranged by the art director. This multifaceted compositional approach was standard practice by the 1920s. (Cream of Wheat in fact was using the box and a brand logo of a black chef some 15 years before that.) Reliance on original paintings by prominent artists to lend the cachet of art to the image was also pioneered at the turn of the 20th century by companies like cream of wheat, Ivory Soap, and Kodak cameras, so it also wasn’t a new phenomenon. But Edison Mazda exploited use of paintings by “star” illustrators to great effect.
Together, these elements operated to reinforce the significance of the “Mazda” in the Edison-Mazda name: Ahura Mazda (Plunkett’s label points out) was a mythical “ancient Persian god associated with wisdom and light.” The advertisements sold the orientalist-tinged, evocative aura associated with the Mazda name and the purchase of just the right lightbulb.
Copy, done right
Obviously, the purpose of the advertisement was to sell the product— here, Edison Mazda lightbulbs— by promoting brand awareness. But in the case of Edison Mazda Lamps and for the General Electric Company more generally throughout the 1920s, the scope and mission entailed selling the image and articulating the “soul” of the company. The adman Bruce Barton (1886-1967), of the renowned firm Barton, Durstine & Osborn, was the mastermind behind this public relations enterprise, known as “institutional advertising.” Barton did the same with campaigns for General Motors.
Barton wrote the copy that accompanied advertisements like those you see here (Fig. 2). It’s poetry. Yes, to our cynical eyes it may come off as hokey, but as copy goes, it’s kind of extraordinary.
Fig. 2. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), And the Symbol of Welcome is Light (Guests Arriving at Party), 1920, Edison Mazda Lamps ad, Tearsheet, Norman Rockwell Museum Archives, Gift of William Hargreaves
There’s the poetry part, and then, in a separate column alongside, the pitch. The light’s wrapped in a “distinctive” ‘His only rival’ wrapper.
Barton and the advertiser’s painters were not merely selling Edison Mazda Lamps, the objects and technology, they were mostly selling General Electric as benefactors and stewards of the miraculous gift of light and all that it signified in specific cultural terms mapped out by Barton. Positioned compositionally to complement and reinforce the impact of the illustration picture, Barton’s texts are integral to the significance of the advertisement. They portray Edison Mazda Lamps as embodiments of the spirit of light that cements family ties and friendships, kindles romance, and fosters a sense of personal security, along with other meaningful life experiences.
Barton’s ingenious texts show ways in which the poetry of the copywriter coexisted, as commercial literature, as an endeavor that paralleled the output of “bona fide” literary authors, with whom many copywriters enviously saw themselves in direct competition. (The wonderful and much-missed historian Roland Marchand (1933-1997) has written extensively about copywriters and their aspirations in his 1985 book (my forever Bible) Advertising the American Dream. My knowledge of Barton’s work for General Electric comes from his 1998 book Creating the Corporate Soul.) Barton became a US Congressman (R), representing New York’s 17th District (lower Hudson Valley) from 1937 to 1941.[1]
Painted light
As mentioned earlier, the decision to use paintings by prominent illustrators well known for their work in print magazines was not a new approach in advertising. But it did become more prevalent in the 1920s to use the cachet of “fine art” painting, to help sell a product. The practice was at times controversial, with advertising officials debating internally the merits of including signatures and other markers of individuality that some felt might distract from the selling message. Barton and Edison Mazda officials had no such reservations. They commissioned Rockwell, whose star was very much rising, along with Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, Worth Brehm, and others whose art can be seen in the Rockwell Museum show.
The paintings amplify the story, one beyond that told by the advertising. For starters, they show how certain kinds of artists of this era worked, as painters and laborers. They also show the noteworthy range of styles that are often lumped together by today’s critics as “academic art.” A quick look reveals that each artist’s style was exceedingly different.
Because of the limitations of the photomechanical reproduction process, however, the replicated advertising pictures differ considerably in hue and sharpness from the original paintings. The replicated pictures thus reveal more accurately how pictorial and textual components functioned together as the tools of persuasion on the printed page. The oils on canvas themselves tell us other things that have their own additional significance.
The Edison Mazda paintings are unique art works that tell stories. They also operate together to reveal insights about representation—of light, for example—or of how these illustrations encouraged viewers to focus. They offer insights into the psychodynamics of storytelling and of corralling gazes to foster empathy and interest. The gaze is an age-old compositional device that directs a viewer’s attention to what matters. It also pulls audience’s heartstrings, encouraging people to identify with the emotions portrayed on canvas.
Details from a few of the paintings on view in the Norman Rockwell Museum’s Edison Mazda exhibition offer examples.
Security
One intriguing theme in the advertising that emerges in the exhibition is the importance of light in providing a sense of “personal security.” Worth Brehm’s painting of the little girl alone (that “mite” in Barton’s advertising copy), away from home (why is she away??), turning on the light to allay her fears is one (Fig. 3). Rockwell’s 1925 What a Protection Electric Is—Old Man on Stairway is another, and one that may especially resonate in today’s challenging world (Fig. 4). The advertisements in the show as well, and Stephanie Plunkett’s wall label, quotes Barton’s text: “When light was really expensive, Uncle Phineas never went to bed without a pistol under his pillow and a lighted lamp at the head of the stairs.” Uh-oh!! Another advertisement [the one with the bandit— does the museum have it?] also uses a kind of “‘Home Alone’ precursor” scene to make the case for light for insuring public safety.
Fig. 3. Worth Brehm (1883-1928), First Night Away from Home, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Fig. 4. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), What a Protection Electric Is—Old Man on Stairway, 1925, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
It would be interesting to know whether there were specific spikes in crime and robbery in and outside of urban regions that drove the focus on security in Edison Mazda advertising, what other factors motivated it, and whether other companies or products emphasized safety and security in their advertising, and if so, when. Certainly, by the late 1960s it was an issue.
Expressing “light”
The depiction of light, of course, is what the Edison Mazda paintings in the Norman Rockwell Museum exhibition is all about. It’s so obvious as to hardly need mention. The advertisements sought to convey light’s purposes, but just as significantly, they sought to depict light as having a spiritual dimension. The advertisements thus went far beyond the mundane purpose of encouraging the purchase of lightbulbs, enabling people to see better.
Following Barton’s lead, illustrator-painters rendered light as a source of security, family togetherness, romance, and peer camaraderie. Light enhanced the distinctive “stepping-out” experience of Jazz Age nightlife (as we see in the Rockwell painting (Fig. 5)) and evoked the fire of desire fueled by alcohol. As an Olympic symbol, it conveyed athletic mastery and victory (Fig. 6). In Maxwell Parrish’s hands, it became an allegory for the Odyssean “rosey-fingered” dawn of day (Fig. 7). These pictures and the advertisements for which they were made were centered on the years spanning about World War I, and the end of the New Deal circa 1941-1942, with emphasis on the 1920s. There’s much more to learn about subsequent decades that go beyond the scope of the exhibition, and these observations. But there’s another dimension to this exhibition, one highlighting a theme that is less visible, perhaps, but extremely important.
Fig. 5. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), And the Symbol of Welcome is Light (Guests Arriving at a Party), 1920, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
“Luxe” is evoked through light, diffused at bottom, through scumbling, to suggest diaphanous fabric. Note as well the juxtaposition of different light sources and effects—the bright light of the outdoor sconces, the warm and welcoming yellows and oranges extending out from the party inside, the highlit crowns of the women’s heads and on the left hand window sill.
These effects also show the importance and impact of Rockwell’s selective compositional choices. In advertising, nothing’s arbitrary.
The silent Joan Crawford film called “Our Modern Maidens (1929)” includes a scene, at approximately 50 minutes from the end, with a couple in a Venetian gondola with similar lamps swinging from it.[2] The film scene is party festive, just like Rockwell’s.
Fig. 6. N.C. Wyeth, The Torch Race: The Grecian Olympics of 1000 BC, 1925, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Fig. 7. Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), Dawn, 1917, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on panel, Collection of GE Aerospace
Fig. 8. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), She was a Queen and I was a King (Grandfather with Grandchildren), 1920, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Offers an intriguing contrast with light in Charles Chambers.
Fig. 9. Worth Brehm (1883-1928), First Night Away from Home, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Notice how the tension in summarily-rendered wrist and fingers suffices to convey the girl’s anxious state of mind. It supplants any need for detailed rendering. The light’s even, evoking the aura of security it brings. Notice as well the brushwork in the mirror!!
Fig. 10. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Man Playing Cards by Lamplight, 1921, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Rockwell’s always called out for his “realism.” The flatness and abstraction of this lamp, especially in its spatial relationship to the background, certainly puts that assumption to rest.
Fig. 11. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Al’s Right Says the Light—Sweethearts, 1922, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
The multicolored fringe is remarkable in paint. In the advertisement, it just translates into something muddy—no fault of Rockwell, or anyone. It just highlights the distinction between original and reproduction, which was simple part and parcel of these illustrators’ and advertising clients’ reality, and to which they adjusted. In the painting, one sees the lightbulb’s light shining through the fringe at top right, rendered as a few strokes of creamy off-white paint. The effects of diffused light can be seen in subtle fashion in the middle portion, in the pointillist brushwork just underneath the lamp, and in short and/or extended highlights on the man and woman’s head.
Fig. 12. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Look at This Picture—Then Look at Your Light (What a Difference Electric Light Makes), 1925, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Rockwell often depicts background paintings or frames within paintings, parallel to the picture plane for a Japanese print effect. The illusionistic reflections of the oil, contrasted with the cream to yellow to orange light, draw the viewer’s eyes to this detail.
Fig. 13. Charles Chambers (1883-1941), The Magic that Makes Houses Homes, 1921, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Fig. 14. Ignatius Keller, Reverence, 1921, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
Fig. 15. Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), Edison Mazda Lamps Logo, 1924, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on panel, Collection of GE Aerospace
Holy lightbulb.
Fig. 16. Dean Cornwell (1892-1960), Lighting the First Incandescent Lamp, Edison’s Laboratory, Menlo Park, New Jersey, 1940, advertising illustration for Edison Mazda Lamps, Oil on canvas, Collection of GE Aerospace
The scene of discovery, dramatically lit, evokes the work of the eighteenth century
British painter Joseph Wright of Derby. The bravura, impastoed brushwork, especially on the apron and right-hand sleeve of man to left, echoes that of Cornwell’s contemporary (if of a slightly earlier generation) Joseph C. Leyendecker (1874-1951). Note the highlighted spot on right cheek and right side of tip of nose of the man to far left, and the enlivening notes of green on the right side of the board on stair.
The Edison Mazda Exhibition as a Preservation Enterprise
The Edison Mazda exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum is about paintings and the promotion of lightbulbs and lamps. But it is also a story about material culture history and its preservation, thanks to the role played by an individual formerly in a subsidiary’s department of Corporate Communications. This now-deceased former employee learned about the fact that a portion of the paintings collection remained extant, although dispersed. He took action to bring the Edison Mazda story out to the larger world, working to reassemble a group of the paintings (whatever he could re-amass among the many that had once been displayed within the corporation’s building). His goal was to be able to display the paintings in one of the company headquarters, to reveal, somewhat nostalgically perhaps, the history of the “ur-corporation,” General Electric.
The disassembly and dispersal of these formerly extensive corporate art collections is a fate met by many original paintings for advertisements of the twentieth century. When they leave the artists’ hands, the artists have no say or control over them. They are the property of the company, and when the corporate institutional memory is lost because newer generations of executives are clueless and don’t care—or headquarters move and stuff gets thrown into warehouses— the original art works often are tossed out (unimaginable though that may seem to us today) or sold off.
(This is what happened, after multiple transfers, to the incredible paintings rendered for Cream of Wheat advertisements. Nabisco had them for a time, Nabisco got absorbed into a megacorporation, the paintings were deaccessioned, some galleries bought them; then those galleries sold off individual works, and poof.)
The original paintings were considered throwaways, in much the same as the plaster casts for sculptural works were regarded until maybe about twenty years ago (or less). What we would describe as “original paintings” were illustrations fashioned in service to the reproduction, the advertisement product. And even the advertisement itself was considered relatively unimportant, compared to the broad awareness it served to imprint in readers and other audiences.
The Edison Mazda exhibition thankfully includes both paintings and the advertisements themselves. Visitors can thus compare originals and reproductions. Viewers can see what, in the commercial realm and in publication (the advertisement, the reproduction), was considered important or unimportant for the *consumer* to see. But the paintings, especially when compared to the advertisements, offer insights into the crucially important priorities for the artists and art directors—aspects I’ve tried to highlight in this discussion.
We learn about the formal and material ways in which the painted art had to be harnessed to reproduce what the client wanted to be seen. And we learn about the compositional and psychological dimensions of that reproduction and advertising process.
But we also see that the paintings offered idiosyncratic experiences and meanings of their own—as with the gaze, the depictions of light, the facture that betrayed the individual style or manner, and the other things I’ve mentioned. As I’ve tried to make clear here, the paintings are windows into creativity, if not true eyes to the soul.
To return to my initial point, however, this exhibition highlighted to me the importance of individuals who, passionate about something treated as culturally unworthy and unimportant, resolved to do something to preserve and protect the material anyway. The donation to the NRM by collector William Hargreaves of the many Edison Mazda advertisements, for example, was possible because he loved the material, amassed a collection, and understood the value of preserving it in one place.
But a second preservation “hero” was John Betchkal (1936-2024), formerly Manager of Communications and Public Affairs at General Electric’s Nela Park headquarters (north of Cleveland).[3] Betchkal did not own the paintings, but understood their importance, acted decisively, and became their steward. As the General Electric corporation evolved in structure, the paintings moved around, shifting places from different subsidiaries, headquarters, warehouses, or individuals’ offices, perhaps. But when Betchkal got wind of the fact that paintings were still out there, he went to the mat to reunite and re-acquire a portion of them and install them in the corporate offices of the Lighting Division at GE in Nela Park. Betchkal had a strong record of volunteerism within the company and beyond. He was also behind efforts to light major national monuments like the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, Washington Monument, and Mount Rushmore. Light was important to him as both a corporate enterprise and as a visionary instrument of national ideals, of the Edison Mazda paintings were part and parcel.
The reassembled Edison Mazda paintings collection is now owned by GE Aerospace in Ohio but are now on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum over the coming months. There, visitors can experience firsthand the marvel (and joy) of having these magnificent works of art assembled in one institution where they are analyzed, cared for with expertise, and truly appreciated.
It certainly didn’t have to be this way. Had it not been for John Betchkal, this outcome probably wouldn’t have occurred. The sad paradox is that he in fact died soon before the exhibition opened. So, the very presence of the exhibition reveals the precariousness and contingency of preservation action. In this instance, we, the viewing public, have lucked out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Fairchild_Barton
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Modern_Maidens
[3] John Betchkal, longtime Cleveland GE executive who lit up monuments across the nation, dies at 88,” https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/07/john-betchkal-longtime-cleveland-ge-executive-who-lit-up-monuments-across-the-nation-dies-at-88.html; https://www.murphyfamilyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/John-J-Betchkal?obId=32193813
