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No Flattery Is Found in an Imitation of a Rockwell

For several years, museum curators and American painting experts had been troubled by discrepancies between Norman Rockwell's 1954 canvas "Breaking Home Ties" and tear sheets of the legendary Saturday Evening Post cover for which he painted it.

Last month — more than three decades after the owner divorced, and nearly a year after his death — his son Dave, 54, noticed a strange gap in a wood-paneled wall in his father's house. When he and his brother Don Jr., 59, gave it a shove, the wall suddenly slid open, revealing the original Rockwell and the other canvases hanging on a wall in the hidden compartment. The painting hanging in the musem was a fake apparently painted by the owner, an artist, when he split up his wife and wanted to retain the original.

Read entire article at NYT