Lynchburg woman was child model for Rockwell painting

One of Norman Rockwell’s models for one of his most famous paintings has been living in the Lynchburg area for nearly 20 years.

Rockwell’s iconic illustration, “The Problem We All Live With,” depicts Ruby Bridges, a brave 6-year-old in New Orleans who broke new ground for school desegregation in the U.S. on Nov. 14, 1960. But the little girl in the painting is not Ruby Bridges. She is a likeness of Rockwell model Anita Gunn Tinsley, now a 56-year-old widow residing in Lynchburg’s Fort Hill neighborhood.

Most people do not know of her link to the painting that received worldwide acclaim after it appeared as the centerfold of Look magazine on Jan. 14, 1964.

Tinsley herself rarely talks about it.

Years ago, when her youngest daughter told her elementary school classmates in Amherst County that her mother was a Rockwell model, “they laughed at her,” she recalled.

She had to send her daughter back to school with proof to stop the scoffing.

“That was typical,” she said. “I really don’t bother telling people about it anymore.”

Recent research on Rockwell’s “other people” confirms that it is not unusual for black Rockwell models to encounter disbelief about their role. While the artist was well known for recruiting as models townspeople from the New England communities where he lived, it is not well known that some of those people were black.

Stephanie Plunkett, chief curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., confirmed that Tinsley was indeed one of the models for the painting.

Tinsley, who grew up in Massachusetts, never has seen the actual painting of “The Problem We All Live With.”

She said she did not know of its significance until she attended a Rockwell models reunion in 2007 at the Norman Rockwell Museum. There, 44 years after her modeling session, she learned of the immense importance of the picture, and of the little girl in it.

Before returning home to Virginia, Tinsley went to the museum bookstore and bought a reproduction of the painting, which now hangs in her bedroom.

“I’m not one to show myself,” she said. “But to know I’m seen by millions of people, seeing myself, it’s a strange feeling.”

Tinsley, a native of Great Barrington, Mass., recently shared the details of her encounter with Rockwell, her first in-depth interview on the subject.

She remembers how Norman Rockwell literally walked into her life. “In the fall of 1963, I was coming home from school, crying because I wanted to take violin lessons. I loved watching our music teacher play and I wanted to learn. But my parents said we couldn’t afford the $25 for the lessons.”

As Anita sniffled along the street, a tall white man approached her, asking what was wrong. When the 8-year-old explained that she wanted to take violin lessons but there was no money for them, the man suggested that, if her mother approved, he would pay for her lessons if Anita would model for him.

“I didn’t understand anything about modeling. All I heard was $25! I had no idea who he was. And I didn’t tell my mother.”

Several days later, Elaine Gunn, Anita’s mother, remained home from her teaching job to care for one of Anita’s brothers, who was sick. When Mrs. Gunn answered a knock at her front door, there stood Norman Rockwell.

Gunn immediately recognized the famous illustrator, although she had never met him. He introduced himself, explaining that he had come from Stockbridge, eight miles away, to talk with her daughter, Anita.

Mrs. Gunn, stunned at the presence of Rockwell on her doorstep, stammered that Anita was not yet home from school.

“May I wait for her?” Rockwell asked.

When Anita tromped through the backdoor, she found her mother sitting at the dining room table, chatting with the man who had spoken to her on the street.

As Anita entered the room, Norman Rockwell rose and approached her. Stooping down and clasping her hands he asked, “How would you like to earn money for those violin lessons?” Then, according to Mrs. Gunn, Rockwell engaged the 8-year-old in a discussion about his latest project on the subject of integration.

Only when Anita, in her blue, Peter Pan-collared school dress, understood what “modeling” meant and what she was agreeing to did the artist turn back to Mrs. Gunn: “For the modeling session, can you have two dresses made just like the one she has on, only in white?”

Rockwell requested two dresses because he used two models for the painting: Anita and her cousin, Linda Gunn. Both girls had been recommended to him by David Gunn Sr., a pipe-smoking buddy of Rockwell’s, and grandfather to the two cousins. It was because of Gunn senior’s referral that Rockwell had recognized and approached Anita on the street.

For the photo shoot, Rockwell invited Anita’s entire family to his Stockbridge studio. When the group arrived, Rockwell pulled out bottles of Coca-Cola from the case he kept under the stairs. The artist popped opened sodas and handed one to each person. “It was wonderful,” Tinsley said with a laugh. “We didn’t have to share. We each had our own bottle.”

Anita was required to stand absolutely still, with her feet positioned on wooden blocks, for long minutes at a time. When Rockwell guided her poses, he bent down and spoke to the little girl directly. “He was very kind,” Tinsley recalled. At the end of the 45-minute session, she received a check for $25, signed by Norman Rockwell.

Anita did take violin lessons, but only for one year. “The strings hurt my fingers. And I didn’t want to get calluses on them.”

After graduating high school in Massachusetts, Tinsley attended a local community college for two years. Then, after working two years in a state housing and redevelopment agency, she went to live with an aunt in Delaware, where she attended Delaware State College.

Love, marriage and the birth of her oldest daughter, Tiana, ended that college try. But in 1992, while working for Sun Oil, Anita earned a B.A. in business administration from Widener College in Chester, Pa. That same year, she became divorced from her first husband, took an early retirement from Sun Oil and moved to Amherst to join Kevin Tinsley, the man would become her second husband and father to her youngest daughter, Kenita. Kevin Tinsley died in July 2007.

“The Problem We All Live With” was back in the national spotlight this past summer, when the painting was hung outside the entrance to the Oval Office, where the President can see it from his desk.

At President Barack Obama’s request, the Norman Rockwell Museum loaned the painting to the White House to mark the 50th anniversary year of those historic events in New Orleans in 1960.

When informed that her likeness now hung in the White House, Anita Gunn Tinsley’s first reaction was, “Wow!” Then, after a moment of silence, she said, “Maybe I’ll try to take a trip to Washington to see it.”