"On Sundays in the choir room we roughhoused and shouted and wrestled while donning our cossacks and surplices." (Norman Rockwell)
The choir room looks like it has been hit by a tornado: clothes, shirts and shoes line the floor -- even a roller skate. A few cossacks and surplices hang in the closet. An Easter lily pokes out of the left corner of the room. A choir boy, dressed in a red robe and white smock, stands on a table to comb his hair. Once he grows taller and his voice lowers, he will be promoted to altar boy. Peter Rockwell served as the model for this painting which appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on April 17, 1954.
Former choir boy Norman Rockwell reminisced about his childhood in the church. "On Sundays in the choir room we roughhoused and shouted and wrestled while donning our cossacks and surplices. The sexton, pointing 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 church." (http://www.antiquesandthearts.com/rockwells-choirboy-on-loan-to-national-illustration-museum/)
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