The Gossips is the culmination of Rockwell’s fascination with the subject of gossip - while he had painted works exploring this theme in the past, it was not until his immersion in the Arlington community that the final composition came to fruition. In the present work, Rockwell depicts 15 figures, each portrayed twice, as part of a chain receiving and passing on a tidbit of gossip. The attention he pays to naturalistic detail in these expressive portraits is exceptional, and the artist…
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