@normanrockwellmuseum: Amazing details in Rockwell Kent's painting titled, "To Make Dream Homes Come True."   By the mid‑1940s, Rockwell Kent had become one of the most recognizable American realist painters, and industries were turning to fine art to promote their role in rebuilding the country after World War II. The Bituminous Coal Institute hired Kent to create a set of twelve large oil paintings designed to highlight how coal fueled progress in everyday American life. Each piece in the series shows a scene representing a modern convenience made possible by coal. Floating above every scene is a powerful, mythic figure inspired by ancient Greek gods, holding a glowing piece of bituminous coal as if it were a source of divine light.   This painting promoted coal as the backbone of home heating and appeared in major magazines of the era, including The Saturday Evening Post. In the artwork, the radiant figure looks down over the blueprint of a brand‑new American suburb—symbolizing the rapid expansion of housing in the years right after the war. The shining coal in the figure’s hand illuminates the rows of homes being planned, suggesting that coal was the energy making these “dream homes” possible.   See this painting on view at the Museum today, part of our current exhibition, American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell. On loan from West Virginia University Art Museum.

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Wednesday 17 June 2026 14:50:43 GMT