A beloved Norman Rockwell painting that was discovered behind a false wall in a Vermont home last spring sold yesterday at Sotheby’s for $15.4 million, a record price for the artist at auction.

 

"Breaking Home Ties" was hidden behind a wall, and from an ex-wife.

    The image, “Breaking Home Ties,” reproduced on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on Sept. 25, 1954, was voted the second-most popular cover in the magazine’s history. (No. 1 was “Saying Grace,” the Nov. 24, 1951 cover, also by Rockwell.)

    The previous auction record for a Rockwell was $9.2 million at Sotheby’s in May for “Homecoming Marine.”

    It was not the only record of the day. “Hotel Window,” a 1955 painting by Edward Hopper owned by the actor Steve Martin, which depicts a woman sitting in an empty hotel lobby, brought $26.8 million, surpassing the artist’s previous auction price record of $2.4 million at Sotheby’s in 1990 for “South Truro Church.”

    Winning bids for both paintings were taken by Dara Mitchell, head of Sotheby’s American paintings department. Whether the paintings were bought by the same person or two different buyers remains a mystery. Auction house officials said the buyer or buyers wished to remain anonymous.

    Art-world interest in Rockwell’s “Breaking Home Ties” has been whetted by its quirky history. Painted in 1954, it depicts a fresh-faced boy about to leave home for the first time, posed with his dog and his craggy-faced father on the running board of an old truck.

    The painting was discovered in March behind a false wall in a house owned by the cartoonist Don Trachte Jr., who was known for having taken over the Sunday edition of the comic strip “Henry” in the 1940s. He bought it for $900 in 1960 and always considered it his prized possession, his sons have said.

    For years, museum curators and American painting experts have puzzled over discrepancies between what was believed to be the painting and tear sheets of the Saturday Evening Post cover. The painting that had been thought to be the original, on loan for an exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., was seen by some as oddly washed out, possibly as a result of overcleaning, some suggested.

    After Mr. Trachte died last year and one of his sons, Dave, was inspecting his house in Sandgate, Vt., he noticed a strange gap in a wood-paneled wall. He and his brother, Don Jr., gave it a shove, and the wall suddenly slid open to reveal the real Rockwell, which was sold yesterday.

    It seems that Mr. Trachte had painted a copy of that painting — presumably, his sons surmise, to prevent his estranged wife from ever taking possession — and displayed the copies. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were divorced in the 1970s. The Trachte children sold the painting at the auction yesterday.

   “Every divorce is always a little messy,” Don Jr. observed in an interview in April.