James K. Van Brunt was a model

Model (art)

Art models are models who pose for photographers, painters, sculptors, and other artists as part of their work of art. Art models who pose in the nude for life drawing are usually called life models...

 used extensively by illustrator Norman Rockwell during the 1920s

According to Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

: The Early Years, by Starkey Flythe, Jr., Van Brunt entered Rockwell's studio, and proclaimed, "James K. Van Brunt, sir. Five feet two inches tall, sir. The exact height of Napoleon Bonaparte." He claimed to be a veteran of the battles of Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg

Battle of Fredericksburg

The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside...

, and the Battle of the Wilderness

Battle of the Wilderness

The Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5–7, 1864, was the first battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, a harbinger of a bloody war of attrition by...

. He also claimed to have fought in battles against the forces of Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S...

 and Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull Sitting Bull Sitting Bull (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (in Standard Lakota Orthography), also nicknamed Slon-he or "Slow"; (c. 1831 – December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies...

, and against the Spaniards in Cuba

Spanish-American War

The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...

.

Rockwell used Van Brunt as a model so often that the Post editors started complaining.

The following is a list of The Saturday Evening Post covers for which Van Brunt modeled:

• "The Hobo," October 18, 1924
• "Crossword Puzzles," January 31, 1925
• "The Old Sign Painter," February 6, 1926
  • The first cover after Van Brunt had shaved off his mustache
• "The Phrenologist," March 27, 1926
• "The Bookworm," August 14, 1926
• "Dreams of Long Ago," August 13, 1927
  • Van Brunt was a widower, but still apparently mourned for Annabelle, his late wife. Rockwell's painting, Dreams of Long Ago, was a result of Rockwell inadvertently barging in on Van Brunt remembering his trip with Annabelle to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
• "Gilding the Eagle," May 26, 1928
• * "The Wedding March," June 23, 1928
  • This is the next-to-last cover in which Van Brunt appears. According to the book Norman Rockwell and The Saturday Evening Post: The Early Years, he appeared in one more cover, that of January 12, 1929, as three gossiping old ladies.