Displaying items by tag: saturday evening post

The National Press Club and its affiliated journalism institute will sell a Norman Rockwell painting the artist gave them more than 50 years ago and bank the estimated $10- to $15-million windfall to support future programs.

The painting — “Norman Rockwell Visits a Country Editor” – was completed for the Saturday Evening Post in 1946. Part of a Rockwell series featuring his visits to everyday places across the nation, including a school and a doctor’s office, it depicts Monroe County Appeal editor Jack Blanton in his newsroom in Paris, Mo. The artist, with his trademark pipe, is pictured walking through the door of the Appeal carrying his portfolio.

“I showed the America I knew,” Norman Rockwell once declared. His America, of course, is the one many of us know and love. We recognize in his famous images the energetic and optimistic folks who are emblematic of this nation’s spirit.

For more than 60 years, this lanky, pipe-smoking fellow, who had the air of a gawky clerk in a country store, set out his vision of this country on magazine covers and illustrations.

Norman Rockwell's The Rookie has sold for $22.5 million at auction Thursday. The 1957 painting of baseball players in a locker room was sold by Christie's auction house — heady heights for a work that first appeared on a magazine that sold for 15 cents.

While the "hammer price" of the Rockwell painting was $20 million, Christie's says the painting's final price is $22,565,000, reflecting a buyer's premium. We've updated this post to reflect the auction house's final calculation.

For decades, the Norman Rockwell painting hung in the principal’s office at Gardner High School, all but unknown to the world beyond.

Now, the 1941 original has burst into the public eye, slated for a Sotheby’s auction that could fetch millions for the Central Massachusetts city.

In the early 1950s, Rockwell gave the painting, part of a popular World War II series for The Saturday Evening Post, to the principal, who hung it in his office. There it would stay until 2001. Realizing its value, school officials had the painting appraised, then stored it away for safekeeping.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) will celebrate the Red Sox’s third World Series Championship in a decade by exhibiting Norman Rockwell’s “The Rookie (The Red Sox Locker Room)” before it heads to auction at Christie’s in New York on May 22. The museum will display the work for six days only, from April 29 through May 4.

Created in 1957, the painting depicts the Red Sox locker room during spring training in Sarasota, Florida. The work, which appeared on the cover of the March 2, 1957 “Saturday Evening Post,” has appeared on display at the MFA in 2005 and 2008, following the Red Sox’s World Series wins.

Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund Director at the MFA, said, “We are proud to celebrate our hometown team and Red Sox Nation by displaying a quintessential painting from one of New England and America’s most beloved artists, Norman Rockwell. Neighbors across the Fenway for over 100 years, the histories of the Red Sox and the MFA are inextricably linked.”

Rockwell, who lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, for the last 25 years of his life, is best known for his archetypical portrayals of American life as well as his cover illustrations for the “Saturday Evening Post.”

“The Rookie (The Red Sox Locker Room),” which is being offered by an anonymous owner, is expected to fetch between $20 million and $30 million.

A painting by Norman Rockwell that has been missing since October 2013 was recovered in Ohio by a private investigator. ‘Sport,’ which appeared on the cover of the “Saturday Evening Post” in 1939, was sold to an unidentified buyer in May for more than $1 million at Sotheby’s in New York. Before the disappearance, the painting was being kept in a storage warehouse in Queens. When it was found, the painting was still in the wrapping used previously for storage and appeared to be undamaged.

WelPak Corporation, the art moving and storage company that was responsible for transporting and storing the painting after its sale, released the following statement: “WelPak Corporation is pleased to report the successful recovery of the Norman Rockwell painting, ‘Sport’ reported missing from its facility in October 2013 through the diligence and hard work of its private investigator, Dean Golemis, of Global Security and Investigative Services in conjunction with the investigation undertaken by the NYPD.”

The oil on canvas painting features a fisherman clad in a yellow raincoat in a boat smoking an upside-down pipe. No one has been charged in the painting’s disappearance.  

Sotheby’s American Art auction, which concluded on December 4 in New York, garnered $83.9 million, far exceeding its high estimate of $62.1 million. The sale was highlighted by a collection of seven paintings by Norman Rockwell from the family of Kenneth J. Stuart Jr. -- the artist’s longtime friend and art editor at the Saturday Evening Post. 

While the entire Stuart collection sold for $59.7 million, the group was led by Saying Grace, which sold for $46 million -- the highest price ever paid for a work sold in an American art auction. The painting was estimated to bring $20 million.

Edward Hopper led Christie's American art sale, which wrapped up on December 5, with his painting East Wind Over Weehawken. The work, which depicts a desolate street corner in Depression-era Weehawken, NJ, sold for $40.5 million -- a record for the artist at auction. The overall sale netted $76.8 million, which is the highest sale total ever for the category at Christie's.  

The New York Police Department is asking for the public’s help in locating a Norman Rockwell painting that sold for over a $1 million at Sotheby’s in May. Sport, which appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1939, was being kept in a storage warehouse in Queens. Police said that the painting went missing last month.

While the buyer has not been identified, the painting was sold from a private collection in Birmingham, AL. The oil on canvas painting, which features a fisherman clad in a yellow raincoat in a boat, will be nearly impossible to sell if the alleged thief is hoping to turn a profit.

Sotheby’s announced that its highly anticipated American art auction in New York on December 4, 2013 will include a selection of Norman Rockwell paintings from the family of Kenneth J. Stuart Sr., the artist’s longtime friend and art director at the Saturday Evening Post. The seven works include two of Rockwell’s most celebrated works – Saying Grace (estimate: $15 million to $20 million) and The Gossips (estimate: $6 million to $9 million). The works, which were passed down in Stuart’s family to the present owners, are expected to garner over $24 million.

Rockwell created his first Saturday Evening Post cover in 1916 and over the next several decades, became the publication’s most popular and successful illustrator. The artist’s most productive period coincided with the start of his professional and personal relationship with Stuart, who became the Post’s art editor in 1943. The two worked together for 18 years, collaborating on some of Rockwell’s most popular covers including The Gossips and Saying Grace.

Elizabeth Goldberg, head of Sotheby’s American art department, said, “To offer any of these masterworks would be a great privilege. To present two of Norman Rockwell’s most iconic works in one auction truly is unprecedented.”

Select works from the sale will be on view in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and New York throughout the fall.

On March 9, 2013 the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened a sweeping exhibition focused on the work of the widely popular 20^th century painter and illustrator, Norman Rockwell (1894-1978). Rockwell is best known for his archetypical portrayals of American life as well as his cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post magazine, a job he fulfilled for over 40 years.

American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell is a traveling exhibition that features 50 original Rockwell paintings as well as the 323 covers the artist created for the Saturday Evening Post. The show features some of Rockwell’s most recognized images including Triple Self-Portrait (1960), Girl at Mirror (1954), and Going and Coming (1947) as well as portraits of presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. American Chronicles includes a number of pieces from Rockwell’s archives such as preliminary sketches, color studies, photographs, letters, manuscripts, and detailed drawings.

The well-rounded exhibition allows visitors a glimpse into Rockwell’s artistic process and illustrates how he came to be the visual interpreter of day-to-day life in post-World War II America. American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell will be on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum through May 27, 2013.