Catalogue Note Sotheby's After the Prom appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 25, 1957
Catalogue Note Sotheby's After the Prom appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 25, 1957 and has endured as one of the artist’s most recognizable and beloved images. The scene depicts two teenagers sitting at the counter of a typical diner. Still dressed in their formal attire, the couple has just arrived from their junior high school prom, and their faces clearly still resonate with the excitement and significance of the evening. The young man sits and watches proudly as his beautiful date flaunts the corsage he has given her to the soda jerk behind the counter. He leans in eagerly to inhale the scent of the delicate flower. A uniformed worker sits to their immediate left. He watches the scene as it unfolds and smiles knowingly to himself, as if remembering his own experience of first love and the emotions it induced. Images of young love and courtship pervade Rockwell’s body of work, even from the earliest years of his career (Fig. 1). In the late 1950s, the s