Hopper’s ‘Hotel Window,’ Rockwell Find Set Records At Sotheby’s

New York City

:On November 29, at Sotheby's before a crowded salesroom, Edward Hopper's "Hotel Window," a classic example of Hopper's evocative exploration of the theme of isolation in American urban life in the Twentieth Century from 1955, sold for $26,896,000, soaring well above the presale estimate of $10/15 million and setting a record for the artist at auction. An artist's record was also achieved in the auction with Norman Rockwell's "Breaking Home Ties," one of the artist's most beloved and recognizable images, which commanded $15,416,000, more than doubling the high estimate and also setting an artist record.

Depicting an elegantly dressed older woman seated on a navy couch in an anonymous hotel lobby staring absently out of a darkened window, the large-scale (40 by 55 inches) canvas "Hotel Window" expresses the loneliness and alienation that defined not only a certain aspect of American experience, but also, in the artist's phrase, the "whole human condition."

The painting, which had formerly been in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, was sold at Sotheby's in 1987 to Malcolm Forbes. It has a distinguished exhibition history, having been regularly exhibited, both in America and abroad, since soon after it was painted. Most recently it hung this summer in the Whitney Museum's Edward Hopper exhibition as part of "Full House: Views of the Whitney's Collection at 75."

Though not known to have been missing, Norman Rockwell's "Breaking Home Ties" was discovered earlier this year in a secret hiding place behind a wall in the Vermont home of noted cartoonist Don Trachte, who had bought the painting from Rockwell in 1960. A replica, made by Trachte himself, presumably to protect his children's inheritance while he was in the process of divorcing his wife, has been exhibited and widely assumed to be the original since the 1970s.

Depicting a father from a rural ranching community waiting with his son who is about to take a train off to college, "Breaking Home Ties" became known to Americans when it appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on September 25, 1954. The painting powerfully captures the generation gap between the Depression-era rancher and his wide-eyed college-bound son in an unforgettable image expressing the social and cultural growing pains of post-World War II America.

A complete review of this sale will appear in a future issue.