WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House Historical Association is bidding to reclaim a series of sketches by American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell that once hung in the West Wing but ended up at auction after a family dispute over their ownership.
The association could face some stiff competition as the opening bid is $2.5 million and auction house clients have been lining up with offers.
The four 1940s-era sketches are titled “So You Want to See the President!†and depict people from all walks of life hanging out in the White House lobby as they anticipate meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They were put up for sale by a grandson of the White House official who received them as a gift from Rockwell after a court battle over their ownership was settled.
The sketches are set to be sold by a Dallas-based auction house Friday. In keeping with its mission to help the White House collect and display artifacts that represent American history and culture, including the history of the White House, the association hopes to prevail. It wants to add the drawing to the vast White House collection of art, furniture and other items.
“They’re so different from any of the other art that was exhibited in the West Wing,†said Anita McBride, who sits on the association's board of directors.
'Arsenal of democracy'
McBride remembers seeing the drawings in 1981 when she went to work in Ronald Reagan’s administration. They were a “focal point†when staffers took visitors on tours, she said. “People just loved seeing†the “wide array and depiction of Americans that have access to their president.â€
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 show a variety of people — journalists, military officers and even a Miss America Pageant winner and her publicist — waiting on plush-looking red chairs in the West Wing lobby as they waited to meet Roosevelt. A Secret Service agent stands watch in one of the scenes.
“In a way, it sort of illustrates 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 series of renderings.â€
The sketches are Rockwell’s only known collection of four interrelated paintings that he conceived to tell a story, the auction house said.
Court settles family ownership dispute
Rockwell gave the original drawings to Stephen Early, who was Roosevelt's longtime press secretary, seen in a drawing smoking a pipe as reporters huddle around him. A family member turned them over to the White House in 1978, and they were on display throughout the West Wing for more than four decades, sometimes in a hallway between the press offices that are mere 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 and spied them on a wall in the White House, according to court records.
William Elam III, a grandson of Stephen Early's, said his mother received the drawings as a gift from her father, the former press secretary, before he died, and that ownership had later passed to him.
The illustrations had gone to the White House in 1978 under an agreement which obligated the White House to return them to Elam upon request. The White House gave back the drawings in 2022.
A federal appeals court settled the dispute in May, upholding a lower-court ruling in favor of Elam, according to court records.
Stiff competition expected at 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 has estimated the drawings will sell for between $4 million and $6 million.
That price tag could present a hurdle for the White House Historical Association, which was created in 1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that receives no government funding. It raises money mostly through private donations and merchandise sales, including an annual Christmas ornament.
The association did not reveal how much it is willing to spend, but the most it has ever paid for a painting in the past was $1.5 million for “The Builders,†by African American artist Jacob Lawrence, in 2007, McBride said. That work depicts hard-working men in orange, red and brown tones, and hangs in the White House Green Room.
McBride said she expected stiff competition for Rockwell's work because of the broad interest in Americana, as well as the artist's work. But the association's mission is to go after art, furniture and other items it believes belong in the White House.
“We try hard to bring them back,†McBride said.
