Washington– the White House Historical Association The company is seeking to recover a series of drawings by American painter and photographer Norman Rockwell that once hung in the West Wing but ended up at auction after a family dispute over their ownership.
The association may face some stiff competition as the opening bid is $2.5 million, and auction house clients have been lining up with bids.
The four 1940s-era drawings are titled “So You Want to See the President!” He pictured people from all walks of life lounging in the White House lobby anticipating an audience with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was put up for sale by the grandson of a White House official who received it as a gift from Rockwell after settling a court battle over its ownership.
The drawings are scheduled to be sold at a Dallas-based auction house on Friday. In keeping with its mission of assisting the White House in collecting and displaying artifacts representing American history and culture, including the history of the White House, the Society hopes to prevail. She wants to add the drawing to the White House’s extensive collection of artwork, furniture and other items.
“It’s very different from any of the other artworks that have been displayed in the West Wing,” said Anita McBride, a member of the society’s board of directors.
McBride remembers seeing the drawings in 1981 when she went to work for Ronald Reagan’s administration. She said they were a “focal point” when staff took visitors on tours. “People loved seeing the ‘wide range and depiction of Americans having 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 portrait of American democracy in action,” according to a description on the Heritage Auctions website.
The drawings show a variety of people—journalists, military officers, even a Miss America pageant winner and her publicist—waiting in plush red chairs in the West Wing lobby as they wait to meet Roosevelt. A Secret Service agent stands watch in one scene.
“In a way, it demonstrates how Franklin Roosevelt 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 amazing series of performances.”
The auction house said the drawings are Rockwell’s only known group of four interconnected paintings that he conceived to tell a story.
Rockwell gave the original drawings to Stephen Early, Roosevelt’s longtime press secretary, and he is seen in the drawing smoking a pipe as reporters gather around him. A family member delivered it to the White House in 1978, and it remained on display throughout the West Wing for more than four decades, sometimes in the hallway between the press offices located just steps from the Oval Office.
The family property dispute began in 2017 when Thomas Early, one of the press secretary’s sons, was watching a television interview with President Donald Trump She spied on them on a wall in the White House, according to court records.
William Elam III, Stephen Early’s grandson, said his mother received the drawings as a gift from her father, a former press secretary, before his death, and ownership later passed to him.
The illustrations went to the White House in 1978 under an agreement requiring the White House to return them to Elam upon request. The White House returned the drawings in 2022.
A federal appeals court settled the dispute in May, upholding a lower court ruling in Elam’s favor, according to court records.
Bidding will start at $2.5 million, and customers are “ready and waiting to bid on this American icon,” Christina Reese, communications director for Heritage Auctions, said in an email. The auction house estimated that the drawings would sell for between $4 million and $6 million.
That price could be an obstacle for the White House Historical Society, which was established by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 to help preserve the museum-quality interior of the White House and educate the public. It is a non-profit, non-partisan organization and receives no government funding. It raises money mostly through private donations and merchandise sales, including annual Christmas decorations.
The society has not disclosed 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. This work depicts hard-working men in orange, red, and brown colors and hangs in the Green Room of the White House.
McBride said she expects intense competition for Rockwell’s work due to widespread interest in America, as well as the artist’s work. But the association’s mission is to go after artwork, furniture and other items it believes belong to the White House.
“We are trying hard to get them back,” McBride said.