The late Vermont artist Norman Rockwell is best known this time of year for “Freedom from Want,” his 1943 portrait of three generations of family gathered for Thanksgiving.
The four grown children of Don Trachte are grateful for another Rockwell work, “Breaking Home Ties.” Many people recognize the 1954 Saturday Evening Post cover for its stoic farmer seeing off his college-bound son. The Trachtes know it better as the painting their father purchased for $900, then forged a copy of so he could hide the original during a contentious divorce.
This is not your typical holiday story. But in the end — and as seen in a new exhibit, “The Norman Rockwell Mystery,” at Bennington’s Monument Arts and Cultural Center — it’s punctuated by a $15.4 million payoff.
As his children tell it, Trachte was the cartoonist of the Sunday comic strip “Henry” — syndicated to 400 newspapers in 40 countries from 1935 to 2005 — when they moved from the Midwest to the Arlington-Sandgate town line in 1950.
Trachte soon befriended a palette of renowned area artists, including Grandma Moses and Saturday Evening Post illustrators John Atherton, George Hughes, Gene Pelham and Mead Schaeffer. But the cartoonist was most drawn to Rockwell, who worked for the Post when it was the most widely circulated weekly in America.
Completing his first Post cover in 1916, Rockwell created 322 more until his last in 1963. His 1951 “Saying Grace” was voted the most popular in the magazine’s history. Second place went to “Breaking Home Ties,” the final cover he created in Vermont before moving to Massachusetts.
Trachte loved the latter painting, in part because his neighbor had posed as the farmer. Seeing the work for sale at Manchester’s Southern Vermont Arts Center in 1962, the cartoonist bought it for $900.
Trachte hung “Breaking Home Ties” in his living room. Then he and his wife, breaking their own home ties, divorced in 1973.
Aiming to divide the couple’s assets, lawyers called for an art sale. But Trachte, not wanting to part with the Rockwell, convinced his wife they should keep eight various collected works so their children could inherit them.
And so “Breaking Home Ties” remained in the family, with Rockwell borrowing it for special shows in such world capitals as Cairo, Moscow and Washington, D.C.
After Trachte moved to an assisted-living home in 2001, his children sent the painting for display and safekeeping at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Enter John Howard Sanden, artist of the official White House portraits of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
“Imagine my puzzlement,” Sanden wrote on his website, “when visiting the exhibition for the first time and confronting the large canvas labeled ‘Breaking Home Ties,’ I realized at once that the painting before me was not by Norman Rockwell.”
Sanden mailed seven letters to the museum starting in 2003, pointing out such discrepancies as the work’s faded colors. But curators, explaining away such changes as due to the passage of time and improper cleaning, held firm they were exhibiting the original.
Trachte died in 2005 at age 89, leaving his children the painting — and lingering questions about its authenticity. Son Dave was searching for answers on St. Patrick’s Day 2006 when he called his brother Don Jr.
In a recent interview, the latter remembered his sibling’s pronouncement: “I think I found something.”
Meeting at their father’s old studio, the brothers noticed a gap behind a bookcase along the wall. The wood paneling, they discovered, was actually a sliding door. Opening it, they found a crawl space with all eight paintings from the divorce settlement, including the Rockwell.
Failing to unearth any written explanation, the family contacted the Norman Rockwell Museum, which confirmed all the hidden works were originals and the “Breaking Home Ties” it had on display was a replica.
The New York Times reported the revelation on its front page of April 6, 2006. In an exclusive interview, the family speculated that Trachte painted the duplicate himself to keep the true one away from divorce lawyers.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” ex-wife Elizabeth Markey was quoted as saying.
Amid the publicity, the children decided to auction off the Rockwell.
“People don’t realize how large these paintings are,” Don Jr. said of a framed canvas that’s nearly 5 feet in width and height. “It’s a burden if you have something too valuable.”
And so the family sat at New York’s famed Sotheby’s auction house in November 2006 as the original their father purchased for $900 went up for bid.
“You always worry at an auction,” Don Jr. recalled. “Anything can happen, right?”
Within minutes, his anxiety morphed into amazement when the painting sold to an anonymous bidder for a then-record $15.4 million.
The family returned to Vermont with the replica — now part of the exhibit “The Norman Rockwell Mystery” that just opened at Bennington’s Monument Arts and Cultural Center. The show features the forgery next to a full-size photo of the original, which went back into hiding after the auction.
The family doesn’t regret letting go of such a prized possession.
“A lot of people have paintings,” Don Jr. said. “Lucky us, we’ve got a heck of a story.”
