NEW YORK — Norman Rockwell, long America’s favorite mass-market painter, now has auction records to match his popularity. “Saying Grace,” one of his masterpieces, sold for $46 million at auction Dec. 4 — a price three times higher than his previous record of $15 million for his “Breaking Home Ties.”
Two other iconic paintings by Rockwell, who died in 1978, also sold that day, for a total of nearly $12 million, according to The Associated Press. There’s no word yet on who bought the paintings.
It was “Grace” that drew all eyes at Sotheby’s in New York. It is an affecting image of a crowded restaurant with a little boy and a woman bowed in prayer at their table as other diners look on.
It’s one of the most memorable paintings by Rockwell, who produced more than 300 for the covers of the old Saturday Evening Post across a 40-year span. Published in 1951, the painting was voted a favorite cover by readers in 1955.
For nearly two decades, “Grace” had been on loan at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., where Rockwell spent his last years.
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