Between 1925 and 1990,

Brown & Bigelow Brown & Bigelow is a company based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that sells branded apparel and promotional merchandise. History The company was founded in 1896 by Herbert Huse Bigelow and Hiram Brown. On June 24, 1924, Bigelow was convicted fo ...

released for sale a yearly calendar for the

Boy Scouts of America The Boy Scouts of America (BSA, colloquially the Boy Scouts) is one of the largest scouting organizations and one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with about 1.2 million youth participants. The BSA was founded i ...

(BSA) featuring a painting by illustrators

Norman Rockwell Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of Culture of the United States, the country's culture. Roc ...

(from 1925 to 1976) and

Joseph Csatari Joseph Csatari (born 1929, South River, New Jersey, as son of Hungarian immigrants) is a realist artist who worked with Norman Rockwell. As a boy, Csatari had painstakingly recreated '' Saturday Evening Post'' covers that Rockwell had painted. I ...

(from 1977 to 1990). Rockwell missed only two years: 1928 and 1930; Csatari completed a painting for every year. The paintings were used to show scouts of different kinds –

Cub Scouts Cub Scouts, Cubs or Wolf Cubs are programs associated with Scouting for young children usually between 7 and 12, depending on the organization to which they belong. A participant in the program is called a Cub. A group of Cubs is called a 'P ...

Scouts BSA Scouts BSA (previously known as Boy Scouts, the official name until 2019) is the flagship membership level of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) for boys and girls between the ages of typically 11 and 17. It provides youth training in moral char ...

(Boy Scouts at the time),

Venturing Venturing is a core program of the Boy Scouts of America for young men and women ages 14 (or 13 and graduated the eighth grade) through 20. It is one of the Boy Scouts' three programs for older youth, which also include Sea Scouts and Exploring. ...

(Explorers at the time),

Sea Scouts Sea Scouts are a part of the Scout movement, with a particular emphasis on boating and other water-based activities on the sea, rivers or lakes (canoeing, rafting, scuba, sailboarding). Sea Scouts can provide a chance to sail, cruise on boats, ...

, and

Air Scouts Air Scouts are a part of the Scout movement with a particular emphasis on an aviation themed programme and/or flying-based activities. Air Scouts follow the same basic programme as other Scouts, but they devote certain amounts of time focused o ...

– engaging in mostly outdoor activities. Today a majority of the paintings, including ''Forward America'' and ''Beyond the Easel'', are held in the collection of the

National Scouting Museum The National Scouting Museum is the official museum of the Boy Scouts of America. Background The museum was first opened in 1959 in North Brunswick, New Jersey as the Johnston Memorial Museum. With the relocation of the Boy Scouts of America Nati ...

. In 2020 as a part of the BSA's

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

filing, the organization listed the paintings as assets. The rest reside in private collections or the collections of museums such as

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis The Children's Museum of Indianapolis is the world's largest children's museum. It is located at 3000 North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana in the United Northwest Area neighborhood of the city. The museum is accredited by the American Al ...

. The idea for the calendar series for the Boys Scouts of America was thought up by an unknown staff member at Brown & Bigelow in 1923. After seeing the positive effect on BSA recruitment by their use of Rockwell's paintings, the staff member wondered if Brown & Bigelow could help by publishing a calendar featuring one of his paintings. The BSA had used paintings donated to them by the

American Red Cross The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...

, which had originally commissioned Rockwell paintings for ''The Red Cross Magazine''. Later in 1923, James E. West, the

Chief Scout Executive The Chief Scout Executive is the top professional of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. In most similar non-profit organizations, this is equivalent to the position of CEO, national executive director or secretary general. Roger ...

, agreed to Brown & Bigelow's proposal for a 1925 calendar with art first used for the ''Red Cross Magazine''. They named the chosen painting, ''A Good Scout'' (it was originally titled ''A Red Cross Man in the Making''). It shows a scout bandaging a foot of a

spaniel A spaniel is a type of gun dog. Spaniels were especially bred to flush game out of denser brush. By the late 17th century, spaniels had been specialized into water and land breeds. The extinct English Water Spaniel was used to retrieve water ...

puppy under the eye of its mother. Assuming the calendar would sell well, the BSA, Brown & Bigelow, and Rockwell worked out a deal for future calendars. Rockwell would paint his works years in advance so that the chosen work could also be used as the cover of ''

Boys Life ''Scout Life'' (formerly ''Boys' Life'') is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Its target readers are boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 18. The magazine‘s headquarters are in Irving, Texas. ''Scout Life'' is publ ...

'' early in the year to advertise that year's BSA calendar. The calendars were large – – and featured a single image for the year; users changed the months by tearing off a paper portion at the bottom. Rockwell missed painting works for two early years of the calendar series – 1928 and 1930 – because he had too many other commissions. To prevent this from happening again and to control the content of the paintings, James E. West devised a yearly workflow. Early in the year, the BSA and Rockwell would both pitch ideas for a painting for a calendar two years in advance, and decide on the theme. While Rockwell was working in his studio, a member of the BSA's staff would visit to check the details of the painting. Every person depicted had to be the idealized version of a scout or

scout leader A Scout leader or Scouter generally refers to the trained adult leader of a Scout unit. The terms used vary from country to country, over time, and with the type of unit. Roles There are many different roles a leader can fulfill depending on t ...

, and every uniform had to be depicted correctly. The tents and other outdoors gear used by scouts in the paintings had to be the right type and could not look like

army surplus Military surplus are goods, usually matériel, that are sold or otherwise disposed of when held in excess or are no longer needed by the military. Entrepreneurs often buy these goods and resell them at surplus stores. Usually the goods sold by ...

. After the initial draft of the painting was finished, West and other BSA staff members sometimes found details to be corrected. Between 1925 and 1976, Rockwell created 49 paintings for the BSA's Brown & Bigelow calendar. Every work, except for ''A Good Scout'' in 1925 (which had already been published in a magazine), was painted specifically for the calendar. Several of the paintings were used by the BSA for a secondary purpose – to serve as the covers of its various handbooks. For example, three paintings – ''Spirit of America'', ''The Scouting Trail'', and ''Come and Get It'' – were reused as the cover illustration of the ''

Boy Scout Handbook ''Boy Scout Handbook'' is the official handbook of Scouts BSA. It is a descendant of Baden-Powell's original handbook, ''Scouting for Boys'', which has been the basis for Scout handbooks in many countries, with some variations to the text of the ...

''. ''The Adventure Trail'' was used as the cover art for the 1954 edition of the ''Den Chief's Handbook'', and ''

The Scoutmaster ''The Scoutmaster'' is a 1956 painting by American illustrator Norman Rockwell. It was originally created by Rockwell for the 1956 Brown & Bigelow Boy Scout Calendar. Since then, it has become one of the most collected images that Rockwell cre ...

'' served as the cover of the 1960 edition of the ''Scoutmaster's Handbook''. After Rockwell retired in 1976, the BSA asked artist Joseph Csatari to take over the calendar series. From 1969 to 1972, Csatari was the art director in the advertising division of the BSA; he became the art director of ''

'' in 1973. Between 1977 and 1990, Csatari created 14 paintings for the BSA's Brown & Bigelow calendar. Like Rockwell, he created all of the illustrations specifically for the calendar. None of Csatari's paintings were reused for handbook covers. Due to declining sales, Brown & Bigelow cancelled the calendars in 1990; ''The Scoutmaster'' was the final painting created for the series.

Rockwell's illustrations

Csatari's illustrations

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

* * * * {{featured list Boy Scouts of America Scouting in art Paintings by Norman Rockwell