Posted on 12/01/2006 7:58:54 AM PST by FLOutdoorsman
The original of a Norman Rockwell painting found behind a fake wall has fetched a record $15.4m (£7.9m).
Breaking Home Ties by the US artist was first sold to cartoonist Donald Trachte in 1960 for $900 when the two were neighbours in Vermont.
But Mr Trachte made a replica of the painting and hid the genuine piece in a cavity in his studio.
The original was discovered by Mr Trachte's sons after he died last year and sold at Sotheby's in New York.
In April, David and Donald Trachte Jnr noticed a strange gap in the wall of a room in their late father's house.
Secret switch
They gave it a shove and the wall slid open to reveal the real Rockwell along with other paintings.
Mr Trachte apparently kept the switch a secret, and his sons believe he made the copy to prevent his wife - whom he divorced in the early 1970s - from claiming the 1954 work.
"I think he just wanted to tuck these in the wall for his kids," Donald Trachte Jnr said at the time of the discovery.
Experts and Mr Trachte's family were confused by apparent inconsistencies between a version of the painting which appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1954, and the canvas they assumed was the original.
Poor preservation and sloppy restoration work were blamed until the discovery of the real painting solved the mystery.
Rockwell's paintings are popular in the US. The most paid for a piece before Thursday's auction was $9.2m (£4.7m) - in May this year.
The Beeb can't even do a straight story without working in a sneer? Yes, they're popular in the U.S. because they're damn good. IMHO.
Thanks for posting a picture of the "Breaking Home Ties" painting. We sent our oldest son off to college a few months back. Except for the clothing the young man in the picture is wearing and the Dad smoking a cigarette (I quit 5 years ago), that could be my son and me! Our dog would rest his head on my son's lap too! It was hard sending our son off, we really miss him, but that's what a parent's job is, to raise them up well and send them off into the world.
Wow...I think you have to be looking for bias to see that statement as being a jab at America. He was just stating a fact.
An illustrator uses the medium to convey a point or idea. A painter changes the color of a wall, and often the carpet it joins.
I have a digital imaged Rockwell I altered for my wife, as an anniversity present. It is a picture of a couple at the clerk of court getting their marriage license. I altered the dat on the calendar to say 11/1, which is our anniversary. We got married at the clerk because of our families rejecting our getting married. That was OK, though. It meant we could spend the money we would have on a reception, on our honeymoon. The couple in the piture looked enough like my wife and I that it was eeire. My wife even had a similar yellow dress on.
I wish I could find the original, as I would love to have it (I would not alter the date on the original).
Beware of blind dates described as having a fetching personality.
Rockwell was the BEST.
I could be wrong, of course, but I do hear a snide comment in that as if to imply that Rockewll is a second-rate artist popular only in his native country. Maybe I've had too much coffee.
LOL! Add his own hair, clothes, etc.
You can "feel" their pain.
The one on the right is preying? That would mean they still have a shot :)
Thank you for sharing, If I could figure out how to enclose an image I would send you a sample Illustration by JM.
I know exactly what you mean. The final parting I made from my parents home after graduating from college to move far away was very difficult. My Mom was sobbing openly and my Dad and I were teary eyed but trying to remain brave. Several days later, my parents wrote me and told me it was one of the saddest days of their lives.
Many years later, near the end of my Dads life, I had the pleasure of making audio recordings of his narration of important events in his life and we revisited that day I left home. I was surprised and elated to discover he remembered the day not with sadness, but with great joy and pride. My life had been filled with blessings and excitement that I shared with him throughout. He remembered the day of our parting only as the joyful beginning of my adventure.
I hope that God grants a similar happy remembrance of this difficult time of parting to you and your son.
I like Caravaggio but I didn't even know there was a missing one. Thanks.
Hovenden's "Breaking Home Ties" was the most popular painting at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
The Rockwell painting is less of a set-piece, more concentrated, more of a "close up". But both "tell the story" (and the dogs are amazingly alike.)
That is one of my favorite Rockwells. Thank you for posting the picture.
When you're working for a client you have to give them what they want. . . . and what the Post wanted was a certain amount of schmaltz.
A Rockwell exhibition toured Atlanta a number of years ago, and I've always liked the American realist painters, so off we went. It was a revelation! His easel paintings are brilliant - and seeing even the Post covers in the original oils is a different story. Rockwell had an excellent grasp of color, composition, and the technical details of painting. He also could pastiche the style of almost any period with ease.
Michaelangelo- the prophet Isaiah.
The Dutch Masters
. . . he even got in a shot at Pollock.
Just an illustrator. Right.
But then my wife loves it when I say her outfit is "fetchin'". A great word for that age-old dilemma.
But I thought Rockwell wasn't a real "arteest"?
Thanks for sharing your final parting story. God Bless you!
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