Part of the 50th anniversary advertising series by the Ford Company. A 1953 magazine has this and the accompanying advertising verbiage to tell the fanciful story of how Henry Ford worked in his garage in his spare time to make the quadricycle
Norman Rockwell painted eight historical works for The Ford Motor Company, in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary in 1953. The present work is a study for one of the four paintings of the series in which Rockwell depicted the early days of the automobile. Here, Rockwell envisions Henry Ford in 1896, building his first automobile in the small brick shed behind his rented home on Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. The scene is actually fantastical and idealized, since the car was actually designed by Ford with several friends at a nearby electric station. In this interpretation, Rockwell paints Ford working on a last adjustment, as his wife Clara looks on while darning socks in the corner.
Am I right in guessing that's supposed to be Henry Ford developing his first car?
ReplyDeleteTony
probably, you can reverse image search to see what the intertet has to say about the painting
DeleteI checked out the car via Google & it matches. Seems there's quite a bit of overlap between Rockwell and Ford, with the company itself using (commissioning?) his work for advertising.
Deletehttp://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/708324/721389.html?1486451708