Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving Painting For Magazine Cover Rakes In $4.3M At Sale
Image via Heritage Auctions, HA.com (for press use)
A Norman Rockwell paintings, titled Home For Thanksgiving (1945), recently fetched US$4.3 million at an auction.
The artwork was sold by the Massachusetts branch of the American Legion Post, a veterans welfare group, which added the proceeds to its funds as it has been struggling financially since the start of the pandemic.
According to ARTnews, the piece had been originally commissioned for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post magazine, as with many of the artist’s other works. Rockwell is known for featuring middle-class citizens in his paintings, which helped the country form its national identity following World War II.
In this particular artwork, the artist portrays a soldier, who has just returned from war, peeling potatoes with his mother. The depiction had been conceptualized by the art director of the magazine, who anticipated that many soldiers would be coming back to the US soon after the war ended. The issue with the artwork hit newsstands on November 1945.
The painting itself has a rather unique backstory, as per The Gardner News, it came into the possession of the American Legion Post back in 1959, when a local priest donated it along with US$500.
In fact, it was hidden in such plain view, that most visitors didn’t realize it was an actual Rockwell piece, or had assumed it was a reproduction. Only in 1982 did a representative from the Norman Rockwell Museum identify the painting as an original work.
[via ARTnews and The Gardner News, cover image via Heritage Auctions, HA.com (for press use)]
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