A STEVAN DOHANOS FOR TODAY

Artist Stevan Dohanos was a contemporary of Norman Rockwell and generally worked the same territory — realistic images that depicted touching or amusing anecdotes, mini-narratives, about American life.  Dohanos didn't have, or wasn't interested in, Rockwell's virtuosic technique, which gave Rockwell's images the quality of supernaturally perfect photographs, but he had great graphic style and knew how to use realistic evocations of space the way Rockwell did, to create drama and lend his images an emblematic, theatrical (or perhaps one might say cinematic) appeal.

Dohanos, like Rockwell, often painted covers for The Saturday Evening Post, and they're quite wonderful.  Above is one of them, from 1948.

[With thanks to American Gallery for turning me on to this delightful artist.  The image itself comes from an extraordinary site devoted to visual storytelling in the graphic arts — VTS (The Visual Telling Of Stories) maintained by Chris Mullen.  It's one of the Internet's greatest cultural resources.]