Norman Rockwell Painting Family Decorating For Christmas

Norman Rockwell painting sells for record breaking $46 million at auction

The painting, Saying Grace, had a pre-sale estimate of $15m to $20m
Rockwell's previous record was his piece Breaking Home Ties, which sold for over $15m
Rockwell's painting The Gossips also sold today for $8.5m

Published: 21:14 BST, 4 December 2013 | Updated: 01:25 BST, 5 December 2013

A Norman Rockwell painting titled Saying Grace sold today at a New York City auction for $46 million, a record for the Saturday Evening Post illustrator, Sotheby's said.

The painting had a pre-sale estimate of $15 million to $20 million. The $46 million price includes a premium.

In 2006, the same auction house sold Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties for more than $15 million, then a record.

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Norman Rockwell's masterpiece Saying Grace (pictured) sold for a record $46 million in New York today - to an undisclosed buyer

Saying Grace depicts a crowded restaurant with a grandmother and grandson bowed in prayer at their table.

Another Rockwell painting, The Gossips, sold today for just under $8.5 million, while a third, Walking to Church, fetched a little more than $3.2 million.

For nearly two decades, all three had been on loan at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., which has the world's largest collection of original Rockwell art located in the artist's hometown.

Rockwell was paid $3,500 for Saying Grace. It appeared on the cover of the magazine's Thanksgiving issue in 1951 and was voted Post readers' favorite cover in a 1955 poll.

The idea for the illustration came from a reader who saw a Mennonite family praying in a restaurant.

Rockwell's son, Jarvis, was among the models the artist used for the drawing.

Norman Rockwell's masterpiece The Gossips also sold today in New York, for for just under $8.5 million

Norman Rockwell's masterpiece The Gossips (pictured) also sold today in New York, for for just under $8.5 million

The illustrator, who created his first cover for the Post in 1916, is celebrated for his reflections of small-town America and portraits of famous figures.

Rockwell, who was from New York, spent 47 years at the magazine and produced 321 covers. He died in 1978.

The Gossips, which was a cover illustration for the March 6, 1948, issue, depicts a montage of the artist's neighbors, wife Mary and Rockwell himself finger-wagging and yammering on the phone.

Walking to Church appeared on the cover of the April 4, 1953, issue and shows a family dressed in their Sunday best walking along a city street. Rockwell based it on a painting by Johann Vermeer.

The trio, along with four other Rockwell works, were being sold by the family of Kenneth Stuart, Rockwell's longtime art director at the magazine.

The sale comes years after a legal fight among Stuart's three sons. Rockwell and Stuart worked together at the magazine for 18 years.

Laurie Norton Moffatt, director at the Rockwell museum, has expressed hope that the three Rockwells will eventually be returned.

'We cared for them like children... We hope they come back some day. We believe that's where they belong,' she said.