Drawing From Memories of an Illustrious Career

Inside a historic Newport museum, Judy Goffman Cutler is sifting through more than 80 years of memories as she crafts a remarkable memoir.

The co-founder of the National Museum of American Illustration was once a young mother in a struggling marriage living in a northwestern Philadelphia suburb. She would transform a home improvement project into a career as a premier dealer in American illustration. In the process, she would reconnect with her childhood sweetheart in 1995. They would open a museum that now houses works by Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker. N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish and other illustrators.

In 1998, Goffman Cutler co-founded the National Museum of American Illustration with her husband, Laurence Cutler. The museum opened its doors on July 4, 2000, and today Goffman Cutler’s vast collection of American illustrations is housed in Newport’s Vernon Court.

The Rhode Island mansion, an adaptation of an early 18th-century French château, was built for Anna Van Nest Gambrill in 1898 by her husband, Richard Gambrill. The Gilded Age residence — “a summer cottage built for only two people: Anna and her son,” Goffman Cutler says — occupies a full block on historic Bellevue Avenue in Newport. It is a contributing property in the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Dec. 8, 1972.

Here is a conversation with Judy as she talks about her career and shares three favorite paintings from her vast collection. The full segment of ART inc. can be found here.

“For years, family, friends and visitors to the museum had told me I should write a book,” Judy Goffman Cutler says. “I decided to write this memoir, how a young mother, a suburban housewife from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, found her career and changed her family’s destiny.”

Norman Rockwell was a natural inspiration for Goffman Cutler, who was born Judith Eve Alpert. Her high school yearbook from 1959 described her as a “charming scholar.”

She also had a love of illustrations.

“My childhood was pure Norman Rockwell,” she says.

Closer to home, Goffman Cutler discovered Larry Cutler when they were teens.

“He wasn’t the only boy in the picture. My dance card was always full,” Goffman Cutler says. “But my diary was also full of Larry.”

The couple went their separate ways after attending the University of Pennsylvania, Judy married Alan Goffman several months after her graduation, tying the knot on Sept. 1, 1963, in her hometown of Woodbridge, Connecticut.

“I can’t believe I did it so fast,” she says. “What the hell was I thinking? Oh, my God.

“I mean, we didn’t know each other at all. It wasn’t happily ever after.”

Goffman Cutler taught eighth graders and was the family breadwinner, earning $4,000 a year. Her first child, Jennifer, was born in 1966, and the couple was forced to move in with Alan’s parents to make ends meet.

“When Andrew arrived in 1968, we only had 21 cents in our bank account,” Goffman Cutler says.

To save money, Goffman Cutler sewed unisex clothes for her children and also frequented flea markets.

“And that’s how I found my life’s work,” she says.

At the suggestion of her mother-in-law, Goffman Cutler rummaged through the basement of Alan’s parents to see if they could find something for their new home. What she discovered changed the trajectory of her life.

It was a framed art deco print of Casanova, painted by Louis Icart, a 19th-century French artist and illustrator.

“So I started hunting for more Icarts, and I managed to find quite a few,” she says.

Goffman Cutler then saw an ad for an Icart exhibition. She contacted the organizer, who offered her $10,000 for her collection.

“That was the eureka moment that made me want to become an art dealer,” she says.

Goffman decided to focus on works reproduced for books, magazines and posters during the golden age of American illustration, which covered a period from 1880 to 1930.

After photography came more into vogue, museum curators and auction houses dismissed illustrators’ works as “disposable, tainted by commerce,” Goffman Cutler says.

“Their unpopularity was my opportunity,” she says.

Goffman Cutler had to overcome snobbish art dealers who “never took me seriously at all.”

“I was a housewife from a suburban farmland,” she says. “ So I focused on the fact that it was art and I campaigned, and I showed them and proved to everybody that it was fine art.”

Operating from an office in her basement, Goffman Cutler went to work, calling people and taking out newspaper ads. Her homegrown business was about to take off.

“My first Rockwell sale I closed in my kitchen,” she says. “It was a big moment for me.”

Her clients bought a pair of Rockwell works for $50,000.

“I hung up and starting jumping up and down with happiness,” Goffman Cutler says. “The kids had never seen me behave like that.

Goffman opened a gallery in New York City and then began doing art exhibitions on the road — in the United States and internationally.

That eventually led to the opening of the museum in Newport, “the perfect place to showcase my paintings.”

In an interview during the third season of ART Inc., Goffman Cutler spoke about her three favorite paintings.

“I really like this Maxfield Parrish painting because I can relate to it as a woman in a man’s world. And it’s one of the greatest Maxfield Parrishes that you’ll see,” she says. “You’ll see his vibrant colors. Most people never see yellows and oranges and reds and blues because they fade. And the only thing they ever saw was the print or the candy box. And as you can see, they have no color in it, just the ‘Parrish blue.’ And that’s why they kept saying Parrish is known for his cobalt blue or lapis lazuli. And that’s Parrish blue.

“It resonates with me personally because it is a woman in a man’s world, and I have always been a woman in a man’s world defending and boosting American illustrations and proving to the world that this is fine art. These were artists that were trained.”

Goffman Cutler said that when she first began in the industry, her fellow art dealers would laugh at her.

“In (one) case, I brought a French painting into a French dealer on 80th Street, and he simply said, ‘Don’t waste my time.’ So I encountered that often and I encountered it over and over again with whatever I was selling. So it didn’t matter. And then when I focused on American illustration, then everybody thought, ‘Oh, she’s really gone crazy,’ because I wasn’t doing what everybody else was doing. I had ventured into uncharted territory.’

But Goffman Cutler showed ’em.

“Usually I would stand in the back of the room and wear my normal cowboy boots or jeans or be very casual and all the men are in bespoke outfits. And then all of a sudden, I am spending record prices on Rockwells and they’re all snickering under their breath,” she says. “And they’re laughing at me because they said, ‘Oh, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s a loose cannon.’

“And I enjoyed that because I showed them. I showed ‘em! They all come back to me now and say, ‘You were right. Why didn’t I listen to you?’”

Goffman Cutler said that “Labor Day Beach” was one of her favorite paintings by the famous commercial artist.

“He’s the artist I didn’t know in the beginning when I started, but I soon found so much about him that I fell in love with him and his style and his colors,” she says. “And this, in particular, is a beach scene. So this is where I spent my childhood. I went to the beach and I learned how to swim. And I can relate to that because I’m still swimming. But I love the handsome lifeguard because as I got a little older, I appreciated lifeguards more and the young couple being serenaded, the kids playing, jumping over.

“And the dog, always the dog. And especially look at that wave, it’s an art deco wave. You can still see how he captured the wave that the mother and daughter or granddaughter are in. But look at those colors and the way it makes the whole rest of the picture just pop. And you see that brilliant picture and there’s so much going on.

“I loved Leyendecker right from the beginning, and then I learned he was Rockwell’s mentor and Rockwell had tried to copy him,” Goffman Cutler says. “Rockwell wrote a whole chapter in his autobiography about him. And he and Leyendecker did over 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post. And this one was one of them. And this is a Labor Day cover. So you can see the holiday of Labor Day was just so important.”

Judy and Laurence co-authored a book about the artist, “J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist,” in 2009.

This is one of Goffman Cutler’s favorite paintings because it shows a young girl with straight hair, jeans and cowboy boots. “Picasso vs. Sargent” was featured on the cover of the Jan. 11, 1966, edition of LOOK magazine.

“That was me! That was what I wore in the ’60s,” she says. “And as a little girl, I also loved playing with dolls, going out with my mom. We didn’t go out in rollers, but later I had to use rollers at night to straighten my hair. So that’s why I relate to that. Plus, I loved modern art in the ’60s and then I went from modern art or abstract art to the most realistic form you could find: American illustration. And I loved it, and I was so excited to find my niche and so I continued looking for other paintings that would fill my gallery and that’s how I started.”

Goffman Cutler says there is “nothing more American than American illustration,” because the U.S. was founded on commerce.

“These are the artists that could earn a living in those days. And when I end a lecture, usually I say, ‘What’s the difference between a fine artist and an illustrator?’ And I tell them the illustrator could pay for his lunch!” she says. “Rockwell is showing his genius in this painting by capturing a Picasso, the red armchair, and a very important John Singer Sargent, who was an important 19th century Gilded Age painter who did all of the portraits of society women. And this was of an actress, Elsie Swinton, related to Tilda Swinton. So here you have something that connects the past to the sixties, which is now also the past to the present.”