Scout Memories
Scout Memories
Scout Memories

Scout Memories

Painted as an illustration for the Brown & Bigelow calendar company in 1931, Scout Memories is a notable early Norman Rockwell oil painting featuring Dan Beard, a founder of the Boy Scouts of America. According to the book Norman Rockwell’s World of Scouting (1977), Beard wanted Rockwell to portray him in his Daniel Boone outfit, but he finally agreed to put on a Scout hat and neckerchief. The setting for the work is a storytelling context, with an animated Beard relating a “pioneer adventure” story to a young Scout.
 
Former museum Director of Collections Sheila Riley recalls the donation story of this work.
 
“We were given this painting via an estate in 1993. I remember the day I got a phone call from the lawyer saying we’d been left a Norman Rockwell painting, and I immediately thought, Well, it must be a print or something. There’s no way it could be real. We made arrangements to go to the Anderson, Indiana, residence where the painting was located—still in the upstairs loft area of the house in what used to be an office. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes—it was a real Norman Rockwell painting and it was thumbtacked on the door of a bookcase!”
today at the museum