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Rockwell canvas found behind wall

Compromise apparently wasn’t an option for Don Trachte and his wife, Elizabeth, who filed for divorce in the early seventies, nearly ten years after they had bought Norman Rockwell’s 1954 canvas “Breaking Home Ties” from the artist in 1960 for $900. When it came time to divvy up their possessions, Trachte, unwilling to part with his prized painting and to end things amicably with Elizabeth, meticulously copied the Rockwell and seven other paintings. He hid the originals behind a wood-paneled wall in his home in Sandgate, Vermont, presumably to protect and preserve them for his children.

At the request of Trachte’s children, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, acquired the painting for safekeeping when its 80-year-old owner was moved to an assisted-living home in downstate Vermont. Museum curators, in anticipation of an upcoming exhibition, sent the grimy canvas to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Massachusetts for cleaning.

When the painting was returned, curators compared the work to tear sheets of the Saturday Evening Post cover for which it was originally painted and noticed some discoloration and discrepancies in the features of the figures. Puzzled, the experts chalked up the inconsistencies to poor restoration, climate fluctuations and damage from frequent travel. However, according to conservators at Williamstown, no restoration work had been done on the painting.

After they’d been told, Trachte’s sons Dave and Don Jr., seriously began considering that their father had made a copy of Rockwell’s painting. In March, more than thirty years after the divorce and one year after Trachte’s death, Dave spotted an odd break in the wood-paneling of the Sandgate home and contacted his brother. Together the two pushed on the wall until it gave way, revealing the original “Breaking Home Ties” and several other canvases.

When Don Jr. informed Elizabeth Markey, Trachte’s ex-wife, of the discovery, he told the New York Times that his mother offhandedly replied, “Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Breaking Home Ties,” voted the second-most popular image in the magazine’s history, appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on September 25, 1954, and is worth an estimated $5 million.