Three Rockwell Classics Bring Nearly $57.8 Million
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: December 4, 2013
Three paintings by Norman Rockwell celebrating homey, small-town
America, among the most popular of his 322 covers for The Saturday
Evening Post, sold at Sotheby’s on Wednesday morning for a total of
nearly $57.8 million, about twice their high estimate.
The Saturday Evening Post Illustration, owned by SEPS. Licensed by Curtis Licensing.
Norman Rockwell's "Saying Grace" appeared on the
cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Nov. 24, 1951.
The Saturday Evening Post Illustration, owned by SEPS. Licensed by Curtis Licensing.
“The Gossips” ran on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on March 6, 1948.
The Saturday Evening Post Illustration, owned by SEPS. Licensed by Curtis Licensing.
Rockwell based “Walking to Church” on a Vermeer
painting, “The Little Street,” translating the scene to fit his
idealized vision of an urban street scene.
The auction house’s York Avenue salesroom in Manhattan, filled with
American art dealers and collectors, went dead quiet while a tense
nine-and-a-half-minute bidding battle played out for “Saying Grace,”
one of Rockwell’s best-loved scenes. It brought $46 million, well over
its high estimate of $20 million and the most ever paid at auction for
his work.
Two contenders on different telephones — one represented by Elizabeth
Goldberg, director of American art for Sotheby’s, and the other, Yasuaki
Ishizaka, managing director of Sotheby’s Japan — tried to buy the
painting, which ended up selling to Ms. Goldberg’s unidentified client.
The 1951 oil, which depicts a boy and an elderly woman bowing their
heads in prayer at a diner, topped a 1955 readers’ poll at The Saturday
Evening Post four years after it appeared. (The magazine paid Rockwell
$3,500 for the cover painting, equivalent to about $30,500 today.)
Wednesday’s auction price smashed the previous high flyer, “Breaking Home Ties,” depicting a fresh-faced boy leaving home for the first time, which brought $15.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2006.
Another favorite, “The Gossips,”
a finger-wagging montage of friends, neighbors and Rockwell himself,
was expected to bring $6 million to $9 million but was snapped up for
$8.45 million by another telephone bidder. When the image ran on the
cover of The Saturday Evening Post on March 6, 1948, the magazine was
flooded with inquiries from readers wanting to know what the heads were
gossiping about.
The third canvas, “Walking to Church,”
sold for $3.2 million to Rick Lapham, an American paintings dealer who
said he bought it for a client. Mr. Lapham was one of only two bidders
for the painting, from the April 4, 1953, cover of The Post. Rockwell
based its composition on a Vermeer painting, “The Little Street,”
translating the scene to fit his idealized vision of an urban street
scene, with family members in their Easter best, each clutching Bibles.
He used a composite of different buildings in Troy, N.Y., and a church
steeple in Vermont. The painting sold for $3.2 million with fees. It had
been expected to fetch $3 million to $5 million. Asked why there was
not more competition for the painting, Mr. Lapham replied, “It’s
stylistically different,” referring to Rockwell’s translation of an old
master painting.
(Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first
$100,000; 20 percent from $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the
rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
All three paintings had belonged to the magazine’s longtime art director, Kenneth J. Stuart,
who had received them as presents from Rockwell while the two men
worked together, from World War II to the eve of the Vietnam War. And
Wednesday’s auction was the final chapter in years of bitter legal
battles. When Stuart died in 1993, he left his entire estate to his sons
— Ken Jr., William and Jonathan — in equal shares. But shortly after
his death, William and Jonathan sued their older brother, Ken Jr.,
claiming that he had taken advantage of their ailing father, forcing him
to sign papers to gain control of the fortune and contending that Ken
Jr. had used estate assets for his own expenses.
The brothers, who were secreted in a skybox above Sotheby’s salesroom
watching the proceedings, only recently settled out of court.
Until the Rockwell works arrived at Sotheby’s this fall, they had been
on loan to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., for the
past 18 years. But during Stuart’s lifetime, “Saying Grace” had adorned
his office at The Post, and when he left the magazine, it hung in the
family’s living room in Wilton, Conn. “Walking to Church” had been in
the bedroom of Stuart’s wife, Katharine. (He never hung “The Gossips,”
according to his children.) Wednesday’s auction also included several
works on paper by Rockwell, also from the Stuarts. Top among them was a
color study for “Breaking Home Ties,” from 1954, which brought $905,000,
more than three times its $300,000 high estimate. Again, the buyer was
bidding by telephone.
Who bought the works remains a mystery. Sotheby’s isn’t saying, nor are
the buyers. Among this country’s top Rockwell collectors are the
filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, as well as the businessman
H. Ross Perot and Alice L. Walton, the Walmart heiress. None could be
spotted in the audience or in any of Sotheby’s skyboxes.
Jonathan Stuart said that he had no clue who bought the family’s
artworks, but he said everyone was “very happy, exhilarated.”
“We set an American art record,” he added, referring to the $46 million
sale of “Saying Grace,” which Sotheby’s was touting as the highest price
ever paid for a painting at an American art auction. “It’s be
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