Rockwell
FOR SALE: Heritage Auctions 5/3/17 - SOLD $1,100,000 - 5% commission donated by the seller to Bioponic World Foundation. Hammer price does not include the buyer premium; total sale amount: $1,332,500.
Norman Rockwell
1894 -1978
Illustration, American
Triple Self Portrait
Saturday Evening Post cover, February 13, 1960
Produced 1959
Oil on photostat on board
Inscribed and signed by the artist lower right
10.5" x 8"
Reference: Norman Rockwell, A Definitive Catalogue
by Laurie Norton Moffatt, Vol., l page 226 & 227, #C496B
Provenance: This piece was purchased by the current owners 5/2004. Prior to that time, the private collection of Henry Strawn who was personally gifted the piece by the artist.
Dealer comment: The most iconic Norman Rockwell image of all time. I had the great good fortune to represent and sell this gem to the seller back in 2004 for $140,000 (over twice the 'market value' at the time). When we spoke time and again throughout the years he would say, "Ingrid this is a million dollar piece."
Condition: Very good
Signature detail:
Norman Rockwell
1894 -1978
Illustration, American
Triple Self Portrait
Saturday Evening Post cover, February 13, 1960
Produced 1959
Oil on photostat on board
Inscribed and signed by the artist lower right
10.5" x 8"
Reference: Norman Rockwell, A Definitive Catalogue
by Laurie Norton Moffatt, Vol., l page 226 & 227, #C496B
Provenance: This piece was purchased by the current owners 5/2004. Prior to that time, the private collection of Henry Strawn who was personally gifted the piece by the artist.
Dealer comment: The most iconic Norman Rockwell image of all time. I had the great good fortune to represent and sell this gem to the seller back in 2004 for $140,000 (over twice the 'market value' at the time). When we spoke time and again throughout the years he would say, "Ingrid this is a million dollar piece."
Condition: Very good
Signature detail:
More on the Triple Self Portrait: (on the Fully Finished oil on canvas version) Rockwell was a stickler for neatness, but here he has scattered matchsticks, paint tubes, and brushes over the studio floor. The glass of Coca-Cola, Rockwell's usual afternoon pick-me-up, looks as if it will tip over at any moment. Other discrepancies can be explained away. He has traded his usual Windsor chair for a stool (easier to see more of him?) and his milk glass palette table for a hand-held wooden palette (an economy of picture space?) Most of the features are real: He did tack or tape studies to his drawings or canvases and he did immerse himself in favorite artwork before beginning a project.
As Rockwell's assistant, Louie Lamone, recalls, paint rags and pipe ashes sometimes conspired to ignite small fires in Rockwell's brass bucket, so the wisp of smoke in the painting rings true. Rockwell's brass helmet, usually placed on an unused easel, crowns this one. Just as the smoke is a reminder that once Rockwell's studio caught fire as a result of his carelessness with pipe ashes, the helmet reminds us of a favorite Rockwell story. While in Paris in 1923, Rockwell acquired it from an antiques dealer who sold it as a military relic rather than as the contemporary French fireman's helmet Rockwell later found it to be.
The four self-portraits on his canvas - Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent Van Gogh - are his references. They invite us to compare (as he did) how other artists tackled the problem of a self-portrait. Unlike Rockwell, all four artists produced numerous formal self-portraits-Rembrandt is known to have done more than 90. Rockwell produced only two other full-color self-portraits: Norman Rockwell Painting the Soda Jerk, showing the artist from the waist up at work on his 1953 Post cover, and The Deadline, a 1938 Post cover composed much the same as this one-the rear view of the artist at work at his easel. Both are unselfconscious portraits, confirming that in 1953 and 1960 Rockwell's view of himself continued unchanged.
Triple Self-Portrait, Norman Rockwell, 1960. Oil on canvas, 44½" x 34¾" Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, February 13, 1960. From the permanent collection of Norman Rockwell Museum.
http://www.nrm.org/MT/text/TripleSelf.html
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Bio: Beloved American artist Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978) is most known for his nostalgic, touching paintings that appealingly depicted simple scenes from everyday life. First hired to illustrate a series of children’s books when he was 16, Rockwell was then hired as the art director of “Boys’ Life,” the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America.
The “Saturday Evening Post,” the era’s most prestigious magazine, bought their first cover from him six years later. For almost five decades, he created 321 “Post” covers, which became his trademark. Later illustrating for “Look” magazine, he probed more serious cultural concerns. |
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