Class, Gender, and Race in the Roaring Twenties at the Rockwell Museum

John Held Jr. "They Went to the Silver Slipper"

JAZZ AGE ILLUSTRATIONS

NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM

STOCKBRIDGE, MA

THROUGH APRIL 5, 2026

 

The “Jazz Age” is synonymous with the “Roaring Twenties.” In the popular mind it was a time of cultural rebellion: short skirts, baggy trousers, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, sexual exploration, votes for women, exuberant dancing, and wild parties. Coming on the heels of World War I, the Jazz Age is often viewed as the death of Victorianism. It even had its own soundtrack: hot jazz.

 

Like many historical labels, the Jazz Age is an oversimplification. Was Victorianism dead? It depends on where you lived. Rural Americans and older ones saw the Jazz Age as a time of immorality, promiscuity, bad music, obscene dancing, and law-breaking. Alcohol had been banned under the18th Amendment (1919), but bootleg and homemade liquor was rampant and enforcement was lax. Some rural Americans embraced the assault on Victorian mores, but on a whole it was rural America that pushed for Prohibition, cheered the persecution of Tennessee teacher John Scopes (1925) for teaching blasphemous theories of human evolution. Unlike today in which just 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas, during the height of the Jazz Age (1920s/30s) 56 percent of Americans lived in places with fewer than 2,500 people. Black Americans invented jazz, but eight of ten African Americans lived the Jim Crow South. Even those living in the urbanized North faced discrimination. Moreover, White Women were only partially liberated. A flapper who got “caught” (pregnant) in the Jazz Age faced shame and a legal system inclined to judge her as immoral rather than demand that fathers support their offspring.

 All of this is to say that Jazz Age flapperdom was largely a Northern, urban phenomenon whose existence was invented, named, and exaggerated by a small number of elites, newspapers, magazines, and advertisers. In over 100 images, Jazz Age Illustrations at the Norman Rockwell Museum explores the period from 1912-42 in all of its excitement, ballyhoo, and excess.

 

Held, "Vacation Time in the Berkshires"

 

Held, "Tattooed Man Goes Collegiate"

 

Gibson, "Have You a Book Innocent Enough for Grandpa and Grandma to Read?" 

 

Among the Jazz Age illustrators, two names often come to the fore: John Held Jr. and Charles Dana Gibson. Held was prolific and, if anything, he is under-represented in the Rockwell exhibition. Gibson made his name a bit earlier. If you’ve heard the phrase “Gibson girl,” he’s the illustrator who depicted working women in high-collared shirtwaists and elegant long flowing skirts. Before the Jazz Age launched, a number of young women entered the workforce. Gibson emphasized their independence and wholesome beauty. His was a subtle form of propaganda as his women were generally of the upper class and actual shop girls worked long hours for little pay. Nonetheless, he wasn’t wrong to notice that it took a degree of wealth to live a bohemian life. Dana is a bit more fun in that he often drew eccentric images–especially of collegiate life– and had an eye for satire.  

 

 

Preston, Miss America pageant 1921, dressing room 

 

Preston, "Without Thinking, Without Caring, He Walked Two Steps Out on the Floor" 

Patterson, "Ballyhoo"

Hosiery Ad

Duer, "Danger Calling"

 

Leyendecker
 

 

Several other illustrators focused on social class, including May Wilson Watkins Preston and Douglas Duer. The latter captured the very essence of a vamp, slinky and salacious in an open-necked green dress that accentuated her bosom. Jazz Age advertisers knew that sex sells. Russell Patterson did a soap add with an obviously naked woman demurely tucked behind an umbrella. Phillips Hosiery advertised its “hole proof” nylons, though most eyes were likely on the thin model in her sheer petticoat looking down at her long legs. Patterson combined suggestive nudity and hosiery for the cover of Ballyhoo of a strike by cabaret women. Joseph Leyendecker illustrated for menswear clothier Kuppenheimer, though ironically, some of his well-clad men blur the line between fashion and conman.    

Jackson

Harlem: Even it was segregated! 

 

African Americans also jumped onto the Jazz Age ballyhoo train.  Jay Jackson at least dressed singer Etta Moten (Porgy and Bess)  in a thin top, though her sexuality is spotlighted more than her considerable acting and singing chops. A map of Harlem nightclub venues makes it seem exciting, though it should be noted that one of them is the famed Cotton Club in which the only Blacks in evidence were the musicians. Only White patrons were admitted to Cotton Club shows.  

 

Lois Jones

I suspect Loïs Mailou Jones was making a backdoor critique when she drew “A Lawyer” as an arrogant-looking child.

 Don’t misinterpret this review as a complaint that I didn’t care for the exhibit. Quite the opposite, though I do mean the suggest that there are different ways of seeing art. The Roaring Twenties are so… well.. ballyhooed that it doesn’t need more from me. But we do learn new things when we change the lenses through which it is viewed.

 

 

Rob Weir