'Hidden' Rockwell sold for £7.9m[$15.4M]

BBC ^ | 01 Dec 2006 | BBC

[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.

[GretchenM]

I used to tell my son when he was younger that I was going to get a chip implanted in him so that if he started to wander too far, he'd feel this irresistible urge to come home lol. He loves to travel, as do I, and it is entirely possible his destiny lies in another, and distant, land. I have come to terms with it; it's much easier to do when they have established themselves, than it is to think about being able to do when they are young and necessarily dependent on you.

[ladyjane]

Many of Rockwell pieces are an echo of earlier pieces. He was well educated in the classics and much smarter than any of the 'art' critics who disparaged his works.

He would do illustrations that would have themes from earlier classics, right down to the poses of the models. He apparently got a kick out of doing it and the art critics not recognizing it.

[Richard Kimball]

Rockwell was a huge supporter of John F. Kennedy, and was apparently very distraught over his assassination. On the cover of the memorial issue to Kennedy, they reran the portrait Rockwell had done of him for the 1960 election (he had also done one of Nixon). Rockwell decided to make that his last Saturday Evening Post cover. After that, he worked on more serious themes, including his Civil Rights series, and a series for NASA on the Apollo missions, both issues closely associated with Kennedy.

By the end of the decade, he was in his seventies, and his skill began to deteriorate. His later paintings are far more impressionistic. This was partly a style decision, and partly (IMHO) as an artist, because his eyesight and hand skills were fading. By the mid-seventies, he was in serious decline, not recognizing many of his friends, but continued to paint until a few months before his death.

During his prime, Rockwell maintained a rigid schedule, usually painting about twelve hours a day. He had a mirror placed over the door to his studio so he could see people who were coming to call, and if he didn't want to see them, he simply didn't answer the door. Rockwell described himself as an illustrator, rather than an artist, and was, as many painters are, very reclusive. The art director of the Saturday Evening Post had one of Rockwell's paintings in his office, and whenever illustrators would pressure the director for more money, he would take their painting and prop it on the wall next to Rockwell's, (he had a credenza set up specifically for this purpose), then stand back and look at the painting, furrowing his eyebrows and stroking his chin. It was an effective way to keep the price down on other artist's work.

[ladyjane]

I wish you could post the two works together: Rosie the Riveter and Isaiah by Michaelangelo. The parallels are so compellying. You obviously know about them because you mentioned Isaiah in your post but - at least on my screen - the picture of Isaiah didn't come up.

[Richard Kimball]

I believe that most art critics disliked Rockwell primarily because of the optimism in his paintings. Rockwell had some shortcomings in his work, but I've never seen those addressed by a critic. Their objections are, by and large, the subject matter, and the humor and love evident in his work. Post-modern critics are a notoriously cynical bunch, and part of their premise is a severe dislike of the hoi polloi, whom Rockwell honored.

Duane Hanson was very popular with the critics when I was in college, and I always thought his work was a three dimensional rip off of Rockwell, but, in Hanson's work, the people are defeated losers, overwhelmed by life. When one of my art instructors was trying to give me the reasons why Rockwell was overrated, I asked him if Hanson was also overrated. He stated that Hanson was a great artist because he showed people as they really were, not the candy-coated vision of Rockwell. It was a heated discussion, and I think it was the only art course I ever got a "C" in.

BTW, as to Rockwell's shortcomings, please understand that I consider him one of the great American artists. Here's what bothers me about him. Because he frequently worked from photos (he took the photos), his group pictures sometimes have a "collage" look to them. In other words, the characters tend to look like carboard cutouts placed in juxtaposition. He painted individual three dimensional objects brilliantly, but sometimes his perspective would get messed up. In the painting of the man looking at a Jackson Pollock painting, the floor looks like it drops straight down from the wall, and the man looks like he's hovering in the air above it.

Of course, I have never been able to paint half as well as Rockwell, which is why I've been doing photography for the last ten years, and haven't taken up a brush since then. Here's one of my "art" photos.

[AnAmericanMother]

We knew Duane Hanson before he got famous - he was a friend of my parents.

His early work was really neat - then he found a "niche" and stuck with it. My parents had his sculpture of a phoenix in the front yard for years. It was about 6 feet tall and we kids used to climb on it. It stayed in the yard when they sold the house (it was bedded in umpty-ump feet of concrete) and I don't know what happened to it. The lot was bulldozed for a Monster Mansion, so it went somewhere. Hope they knew it was a Hanson (serve them right if they didn't, philistines.)

Wrt your silly art perfesser, roses are as real as manure piles, and they smell a LOT better!

[AnAmericanMother]

Lemme give it a shot - I'll post them from other sources just in case there's a problem with the Vatican site . ..

[ladyjane]

That is wonderful.

Thank you!

[Richard Kimball]

Wow, I think Hanson's sculptures go in the $300,000+ range now. I liked a lot of Hanson's work, and admired his craftsmanship, but the stuff was just too depressing for me.

[sinanju]

I have always felt Rockwell's "Southern Justice" was influenced by Goya's "black" paintings.

[Silly]

Two fortunate sons.

[sinanju]

The missing Caravaggio was his "The Taking of Christ" (i.e. JC being arrested after the Last Supper), which had been lost for two centuries, known only through contemporary copies and which turned up in 1992 on the wall of a house owned by the Jesuit order in Dublin.

There's an interesting book out on the subject.

[wideminded]

I came across a book that discussed the relationship between agressiveness and creativity. The author devoted a chapter to Caravaggio and said that Caravaggio had killed two men.

[maine-iac7]

Anyways, when Leslie Stall asked them if Norman Rockwell was accepted in their circle as an 'artist', all agreed that he was not, just merely an 'illustrator'.

Rockwell, himself, a really non-egotistical person, called himself an illustrator = but as any of you know who have ever stood in front of one of his paintings, he was a 'fine artist' - In addition, he did some private - non-illustration - paintings that I have never seen printed. They could hang on the wall with the best of the Masters.

(The boy on the running board is one of his sons)

[Sam Cree]

Rockwell was a great artist. An illustrator perhaps, but a great master all the same. Nice thread.

[flaglady47]

"One 'art' object was a toilet seat within a picture frame."

This reminds me of a photo I took when in Vienna, Austria, about 20 years ago. We were in Sigmund Freud's office, where he practiced his shrinkness, and I had to go to the bathroom. I asked one of the clerks there where it was, went in to take care of business and noticed how old everything in there was (clean, but old). Also very quaint, as bathrooms go. When I went out, I asked the lady if this was the same toilet that Freud himself had used. She said yes, so I went back in, took a picture of the pot and when I got home, I was going to blow the picture up to an 8 by 10, caption it with "Freud Sat Here", frame it, and hang it. I guess I too would have had a "toilet picture", LOL! Unfortunately, I couldn't find the roll of film when I got home (don't know why), so it never got hung. I figure it would have made quite a conversation piece. C'est la vie.

[AnAmericanMother]

The ones in the "Quinta del Sordo"?

[AnAmericanMother]

A psychiatrist I know has a photo of Freud's consulting room on his wall.

It would be darned funny to have a photo of Freud's john in his john!

[FreedomCalls]

Art Renewal Center ping.

http://www.artrenewal.org/

[Sensei Ern]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Lord willing, some day, I will own the original, or at least a reprint.