The National Museum of American Illustration announces it has received on loan a significant oil painting by America’s beloved illustrator, Norman Rockwell, “Choirboy Combing Hair For Easter.” It was first published as a cover for the Saturday Evening Post on April 17, 1954.

The painting is on display now in the museum’s Vernon Court Petit Salon gallery, where it hangs alongside three other Saturday Evening Post covers by Rockwell, allowing visitors and scholars to compare examples of his work from the 1920s to the 1950s. This loan fills a significant role in the museum’s exhibit, now that there are images from all the decades of the Post.

The subject of youth was one of Rockwell’s favorite themes throughout his long tenure as the Saturday Evening Post’s chief cover artist. More than half of his 1950s covers featured children, and Rockwell made numerous references to his own childhood in his paintings, as illustrated in “The Choirboy.”

Recalling his days in the church choir, Rockwell wrote in The Norman Rockwell Album, “On Sundays in the choir room we roughhoused and shouted and wrestled while donning our cassocks and surplices. The sexton, poking his head around the door, would yell that it was time for us to enter the church. Plastering down our cowlicks, pushing, jostling, we’d form two lines. Then, suddenly, we’d grow quiet and solemn-faced and march into the church.”

Rockwell uses a paneled archway to frame the setting, and through it we glimpse the proof of last-minute preparations in the scattered clothing, sneakers and abandoned roller skates. Such “behind-the-scenes” treatment appears throughout Rockwell’s Post covers, a vantage point which allowed him to show the human side of his protagonists with humor and compassion.

Rockwell’s Pittsfield, Mass., neighbor Tom Chappell posed for the choirboy, his “boy-next-door” appeal embodied in his rumpled striped socks, worn-out shoes and earnest expression. Chappell typifies the kind of model that Rockwell sought out among family, friends and neighbors.

To celebrate the loan of this painting, the museum is offering eight special tour dates this winter: January 6-8 and 20-22; and February 24-25. A guided tour will be offered each day at 2 pm; reservations are recommended. Call 401-851-8949 extension 18 or visit www.americanillustration.org.