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A Rockwell Rediscovered

Breaking Home Ties (Rockwell) ©1954 SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN

 

Breaking Home Ties (Replica)

 

Breaking Home Ties Image Compare Click on the image above to compare the two versions of Breaking Home Ties. The original Rockwell is on the left, the replica is on the right.

 

An Iconic Norman Rockwell – Not Known to Have Been Missing – Found Again

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — Through an improbable convergence of circumstances, an iconic Norman Rockwell painting, not known to have been missing, has been found.

Breaking Home Ties was painted by Rockwell for the September 25, 1954 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. It depicts a boy from a ranch in New Mexico who is about to leave home for the first time. His youthful optimism is contrasted with the weather-beaten face and subdued demeanor of his rancher father as they sit on the running board of an old truck. The mournful eyes of the family collie as it rests its head on the boy’s lap, adds poignancy to Rockwell’s famous rite-of-passage narrative. It is one of Rockwell’s most popular and most often reproduced images and is considered by Rockwell experts to be one of his masterworks.

In 1960, Breaking Home Ties was purchased for $900 from Rockwell by his friend and fellow artist, Don Trachte, Sr., at an exhibition of Rockwell’s work at the Southern Vermont Art Center. Breaking Home Ties was one of Trachte’s most prized possessions and remained so to his death in 2005. Both Rockwell and Trachte were part of a rural coterie of nationally known artists living and working in Arlington, Vermont. The tightly knit group of Arlington artists included Grandma Moses, Dean Cornwell, Gene Pelham, John Atherton, George Hughes and Mead Schaeffer. Trachte, a cartoonist for the syndicated comic Henry, was a talented and multi-faceted artist who spent hours in Rockwell’s studio observing his technique and painting methodology.

The painting was included in an exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum in 2003, the first time it had been on public view for nearly 25 years. At that time, museum and other experts noted discrepancies between the painting and The Saturday Evening Post tear sheet, but the impeccable provenance of the work as well as a long-held understanding among Rockwell experts that the work had been damaged outweighed these concerns. But, a series of extraordinary events early this year revealed the existence of a hidden original and an astonishing replica.

Breaking Home Ties in Arlington

Rockwell lived in Arlington from 1939 to 1953, one of the most important and acclaimed periods in his career. It was an era of rapid post-war growth and tremendous world change and Rockwell’s art reassured the nation that cherished small-town values would not disappear. During those 14 particularly productive years he produced many of the paintings for which he achieved lasting fame, including the Four Freedoms, Saying Grace, Breaking Home Ties, The Gossips, Christmas Homecoming, Girl at Mirror, and Willie Gillis.

In 1970, Don Trachte, Sr. and his wife became embroiled in a divorce dispute that included the contest of eight original paintings in their collection; of these, the painting of greatest personal value to Trachte was clearly Breaking Home Ties. As part of the settlement, the paintings were given to the children, however the parents could hang the paintings in their respective homes. Trachte kept the Rockwell painting and his wife kept the additional seven paintings that included works by Mead Schaeffer, George Hughes and several other Arlington artists. Over the years, the family received numerous inquiries from collectors and dealers interested in purchasing the Rockwell, most notably repeated requests from Ross Perot. The startling discovery, or rediscovery, in March of the actual whereabouts of Breaking Home Ties by two of the Trachte children is a tale unto itself.

When Trachte moved to an elder care facility in 2002 the children approached the Norman Rockwell Museum to house the painting for safe keeping. The painting was removed from Don Trachte, Sr.’s home, where it had hung for decades on a wall above his grand piano. The museum provided the family with a full-sized photographic print of the painting to replace it and the Trachte children hung it in its place.

Breaking Home Ties is well-traveled. It has been included in a number of national and international exhibitions beginning in 1955 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Following Trachte’s acquisition of the painting, it continued to be publicly exhibited throughout the 1960s and ’70s; most notably in Moscow and Cairo in 1964. For the first time in decades, the painting was put on view in 2003 at an exhibition about Rockwell’s Vermont years at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Initial Questions

Prior to exhibition and with the family’s consent, the museum took Breaking Home Ties to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Williamstown, Mass., for a cleaning, as it had acquired a layer of grime due to its proximity to a wood stove in Trachte’s home. At the lab, the painting was lightly cleaned. When it arrived back at the museum, curators noted and closely examined some discrepancies in the painting from the original magazine cover tear sheet. The boy’s face was not quite the same, for example, and the coloration was slightly different.

The curators concluded that these variations were due to the effects of time as well as the painting’s history of travel, including the fact that it had experienced severe climate changes (Moscow to Cairo). Most importantly they held the belief that the painting had, at some point in the preceding 40 years, been poorly conserved. This opinion was based on reports, including an audiotape account recorded in 1987 by David Wood, former director of the Norman Rockwell Museum who had seen what he believed to be the final version of the painting in Bennington, Vermont, in 1978, that suggested the painting had been badly cleaned and clumsily restored decades ago.

Questions about the authenticity of the painting were raised but, given its provenance and the understanding that the painting had been retouched by a less than deft hand, they were put aside. The prevailing opinion was that one of the great Rockwell paintings of all time had been compromised.

While Breaking Home Ties was on exhibit at the museum (June 2003 – February 2006), it was viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, including a number of art experts. Most accepted it as an authentic Rockwell but some did not, including one who contacted the museum with his observations, calling the painting a “third-rate replica.”

In May 2005 when Don Trachte, Sr. died, ownership and access to their father’s studio and home moved to the hands of his four children, Donald A. Trachte, David C. Trachte, Marjorie Rosenberg and Jon B. Trachte. In late 2005, the authenticity of another painting owned by the Trachte family, a Mead Schaeffer, was questioned by the Illustration House in New York, who had considered it for inclusion in an exhibition.

Mounting Mysteries

With this strange convergence of mounting mysteries, Don Trachte, Jr. began, early this year, to question what he believed to be his family’s collection of original paintings by Arlington artists. At first he thought nothing had been done to the paintings, then, that there were conservation problems, then that his father may have tried to do his own conservation work, and then, the unthinkable, that his father may have made copies of the paintings. It was plausible, if inconceivable, that his father had made a replica of the original Rockwell.

In February 2006, Dave and Don Trachte began a concerted effort to search for clues about the painting in their father’s home, which had remained untouched since his death almost a year earlier. Dave found two paintings by artist George Hughes in Trachte’s studio that were almost exactly the same and, disturbed by his discovery, immediately called Don. The brothers then found film in the studio. The prints revealed that their father had possessed two, nearly identical versions of Breaking Home Ties. Differences in the two paintings were clearly discernible. They had another professional examination of the painting done by the Williamstown Art Conservation Center to see if any conservation work, other than the cleaning the lab had done in 2002, had been performed on the painting. The lab’s definitive analysis showed that the painting had never had any restoration.

The Discovery

The brothers, now certain that their painting was a copy, were determined to search every inch of the house for what they were convinced had to be the original Rockwell. On Thursday, March 16, Dave began looking for places in the studio and living room where a painting could be hidden. On a thinly-paneled wall, where the painting and then the print hung, next to an inset bookcase, he noticed a gap in the paneling. When he pushed the wall the panel seemed to move freely. He then pulled the paneling away, about an inch, to look behind the wall and saw the edges of some small paintings and what he thought was the edge of a large painting. He called Don to tell him the news and waited for his arrival the next afternoon.

Don arrived with a hammer and wedge and tools to take the wall apart, but Dave assured him that they wouldn’t need them. He had figured out that the book shelf came apart. According to Don, “The wall pulled quite hard, but was movable. We pulled the wall about six inches and I saw the two Gene Pelham paintings hanging on a clean, paneled wall, behind the wall, and identical to the wall that we were moving. I knew in an instant that I was looking at the eight paintings disputed in my parents divorce in 1973.

“We moved the wall a little more and I could see the Mead Schaeffer painting and then the Webb, then a Lea Ehrich. I looked behind the wall at an angle and told Dave that I believed the Rockwell was behind the next wall. We began to move the second wall and, as we did, we saw the tail of the dog emerge, then the truck and the boy. We stopped and looked at the boy and knew instantly that this was the original.”

They immediately contacted the Norman Rockwell Museum and by Monday morning were working with museum staff to assess this unlikely and disconcerting discovery. What has been revealed is that it appears that Don Trachte, Sr. made replicas of the seven most important works to him in his collection and secretly hid the originals. In his lifetime, he had been especially zealous in protecting his family’s inheritance. The Trachte children believe that this was the underlying motivation that drove their father to this unusual and improbable act of having copied the eight works.

Norman Rockwell Museum Director Laurie Norton Moffatt said “Both the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Trachte family believed it was important was to come forward with this extraordinary discovery. We are all so delighted that one of Rockwell’s great masterpieces has been recovered and will be available again for scholarly examination as well as public enjoyment. The museum has already planned an exhibition, scheduled to open on April 6, to present the original paintings beside the replicas, so that everyone can experience these works firsthand. It is an improbable tale that led to this discovery and we are very pleased to work with the Trachte family to present these astonishing works to the public.”