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white House The Historical Association is bidding to retrieve a series of drawings American painter and illustrator norman rockwell Which once hung in the West Wing, but ended up at auction after a family dispute over ownership.
The association may face stiff competition as the starting bid is $2.5 million and clients of the auction house are lining up to bid.
Four sketches from the 1940s titled “So You Want to See the” chairmanAnd people from all walks of life are depicted wandering through the White House lobby as they hope to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They were put up for sale by the grandson of a White House official, who received them as a gift from Rockwell after settling a court battle over their ownership.
The drawings are scheduled to be sold by a Dallas-based auction house on Friday. In keeping with its mission to help the White House collect and display artifacts representing American history and culture, including the history of the White House, the association hopes it will succeed. It seeks to add the drawing to the vast White House collection of art, furniture and other objects.
“They are very different from any other art displayed in the West Wing,” said Anita McBride, who sits on the association’s board of directors.
‘Arsenal of Democracy’
McBride remembers seeing the picture in 1981 when she went to work in Ronald Reagan’s administration. They were a “focal point” when staff led visitors on tours, he said. “People just loved seeing” “the wide range and portrayal of Americans who have access to their president.”
The series, created in 1943 and published in the Saturday Evening Post during World War II, “offers an intimate and deeply human portrayal of American democracy in action,” according to a description on the Heritage Auctions website.
The sketches showed a variety of people – journalists, military officers and even a Miss America pageant winner and her publicist – waiting to meet Roosevelt on plush-looking red chairs in the West Wing lobby. In one scene a Secret Service agent stands watch.
“In a way, it reflects how FDR always talked about the ‘arsenal of democracy’ and what made the United States unique,” said Matthew Costello, the association’s chief education officer. “It’s an incredible range of presentations.”
The auction house said the sketches are Rockwell’s only known collection of four interconnected paintings, which he conceived to tell a story.
Court settles family ownership dispute
Rockwell gave the original drawings to Stephen Early, Roosevelt’s longtime press secretary, with one drawing showing him smoking a pipe with reporters hovering around him. A family member bequeathed them to the White House in 1978, and they remained on display throughout the West Wing for more than four decades, sometimes in a corridor between the press offices that are just steps from the Oval Office.
The family’s ownership dispute began in 2017 when Thomas Early, one of the press secretary’s sons, was watching a television interview with the president. donald trump And according to court records, he was spied on a wall at the White House.
Stephen Early’s grandson William Elam III said that his mother had received the paintings as a gift before his father, a former press secretary, died, and ownership later passed to him.
The paintings went to the White House in 1978 under an agreement under which the White House was obligated to return them to Elam upon request. The White House returned the pictures in 2022.
A federal appeals court settled the dispute in May by upholding a lower court ruling in Elam’s favor, according to court records.
Expected tough competition in the auction
Bidding will start at $2.5 million and clients “are ready and waiting to compete for this American icon,” Christina Rees, director of communications for Heritage Auctions, said in an email. The auction house estimates the paintings will sell for between $4 million and $6 million.
That price tag may present a deterrent for the White House Historical Association, which was created in 1961 by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to help preserve the museum quality of the White House interior and educate the public. It is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that receives no government funding. It raises funds mostly through private donations and the sale of merchandise, including an annual Christmas ornament.
The association did not disclose how much it was willing to spend, but the most it had ever paid was $1.5 million for a painting “The Builders” by African American artist Jacob Lawrence in 2007, McBride said. That piece depicts hard-working men in orange, red and brown and hangs in the White House Green Room.
McBride said he expected stiff competition for Rockwell’s work due to the widespread interest in Americana as well as the artist’s work. But the association’s mission is to seek out art, furniture and other items they believe belong in the White House.
“We work hard to get them back,” McBride said.