Photograph by Ed Pollard, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II digital slr-2008.

Yankee Doodle

Artist Norman Rockwell (American, 1894 - 1978)

CultureAmerican

Date1937

MediumCharcoal on paper

DimensionsOverall: 34 x 23 in. (86.4 x 58.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 40 3/4 x 29 1/2 x 2 3/8 in. (103.5 x 74.9 x 6 cm)

InscribedSigned "Norman Rockwell" lower right

Credit LineMuseum purchase, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Art Purchase Fund

Object number2007.13

Not on view

DescriptionThis charcoal drawing is of a man dressed in breeches and a long waistcoat, clothes common to around the time of the Revolutionary War. He is sitting like he is riding a horse, but there is no horse in the drawing. He is wearing a hat with a feather in it.

Label TextNorman Rockwell American (1894-1978) Yankee Doodle, 1937 Charcoal on paper, 34 x 23 in. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA Museum purchase, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Art Purchase Fund 2007.13 Yankee Doodle went to town A-riding on a pony Stuck a feather in his hat And called it macaroni…. Norman Rockwell's drawing depicts the mythic colonial American figure Yankee Doddle riding on horseback, his waistcoat and pony tail trailing in the breeze. It is one of the artist's most impressive sketches for his famous mural of the same subject done in 1937 for the Tap Room of the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey (see illustration). In the mural the foppish, yet slyly triumphant Yankee Doodle is shown parading briskly past the Nassau Inn as Hessian troops and the local townsfolk burst into laughter. Rockwell's lanky friend Tom Hildebrandt served as the model for Yankee Doodle. Between 1916 and 1963, Norman Rockwell produced more than 320 cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, making him the most famous commercial illustrator of the twentieth century. Though he devoted much of his art to scenes of contemporary American life, he also produced colonial subjects such as Yankee Doodle. Rockwell believed that America's present greatness was firmly rooted in its past. The country's democratic ideals of equality and fairness, its war-time feats of heroism and self-sacrifice, and even its sense of humor had, he felt, been part of the national experience from the very beginning. ProvenanceCollection of Judy and Alan Goffman, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania; Christie's Auction House, New York, [lot 297] December 4, 1996; Collection of Neil and Sharon Phillips, Montreal, New York and Montpellier Station, Virginia; Phillips family by descent; David Tunick, New York, 2007; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Museum purchase, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Art Purchase, Fund, 2007. Published ReferencesLaurie N. Moffatt, _Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue_, vol. 1 (Storckbridge, Massachusetts: Norman Rockwell Museum, 1986), 486-487, no. A611e illus. ISBN: 978-0961527310