For years, the painting hung in the hallway of an American Legion post in Massachusetts – alone, unattended, on a wall near the front door. “Where anyone could have dated,” says Ken LaBrack with a chuckle.

For years no one cared too much about the fate of the painting as they thought it was nothing more than a reproduction of Norman Rockwell Home for Thanksgiving, which first appeared on the cover of the November 24, 1945 issue of The Saturday night message. LaBrack, former commander of Eugene M. Connor’s Post 193 of Winchendon, Mass., Said it wasn’t until someone walked in and offered $ 500 for the work that officers at the post began to reconsider their position: a beautiful fake.

So one day in the early 1970s the painting was pulled from the wall and taken to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, a two hour drive from the station. Museum officials examined the work and delivered their verdict: It is an original. Post officials, stunned by the revelation, loaned the painting to the museum for safekeeping, and for nearly five decades, this enduring image of a soldier mother and son happily peeling potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner. remained in the custody of the Rockwell Museum. Its custodians have exhibited the beloved work and occasionally toured it across America and the world, most recently as part of the Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms exposure.

Now for the first time, the historic, beloved Rockwell Home for Thanksgiving heads to auction as the centerpiece of Heritage Auctions’ American Art Signature® auction on November 5. It is estimated to sell for over $ 4 million, which matches its status as one of Rockwell’s most enduring work series featuring soldiers returning home after WWII.

“It stopped my heart the minute I saw it,” says Aviva Lehmann, Director of American Art at Heritage Auctions. “Anyone who sees this painting comes to a halt, not just because it’s a classic Rockwell, but because it pulls on their heartstrings. And it seems entirely appropriate that the American auction house could negotiate this sale of an American icon on behalf of American heroes.

The Post is now separating itself from the painting for practical reasons: it needs the proceeds from the sale to fund delayed repairs to an aging and decaying building, which LaBrack said was “delayed because we didn’t have it. money “. The remaining proceeds will go into a trust, from which interest and income will pay for bills, operating costs and additional repairs.

There are some 500 active members, LaBrack says, along with 160 Sons of the Legion and 125 other auxiliary members.

How the post ended with the painting, also known as Thanksgiving: mother and son peeling potatoes, is a new Rockwellian on its own. LaBrack says that decades ago the Post began looking to build a new headquarters and seeking donations for its construction. A priest named Father Wilfred A. Tisdale heard of his efforts and gave him as a donation one of the paintings he kept in his private collection.

Tisdale was well known in the area: in 1942 he built on the shores of Lake Monomonac a rock and concrete structure resembling the bow of a boat called the Sainte Marie. The structure served as a vacation retreat in Tisdale, according to the Winchendon Springs Lake Association, where it exhibited “its collection of rare works of art of true museum quality” gathered from travels around the world.

LaBrack, a Navy veteran, says Tisdale brought a representative from the Legion to his retirement and donated any of his paintings to help fund the new building.

“There were 10 paintings leaning on the floor, not even hanging,” says LaBrack. “The Legion member walked up and down and said, ‘What about this one for the post, because there’s the army guy with his mother peeling potatoes?’ And Father Tisdale said OK. He also said, “Expect this as long as you can. “

Surely Tisdale knew what he had: one of Rockwell’s legendary reunion pieces painted as the war began to pass in peacetime.

For Saturday evening mail he painted a myriad of images of the returning soldier, including the iconic GI reunion which appeared in May 1945 and was famously used in the film News Released. Home for Thanksgiving became so beloved because it showed “the veteran doing KP [kitchen patrol] and love it, ”says Rockwell in the 1946 book Illustrator Norman Rockwell.

“According to an editor of Saturday evening mail, Rockwell’s original intention for the 1945 Thanksgiving cover was for a large group of praying people giving thanks, ”the Norman Rockwell Museum states on its website. “With the end of the war already in sight, art publisher Ken Stuart advised Rockwell to work on a photo of a returning soldier. The gist of Rockwell’s picture is that the soldier is happy to do at home what he hated to do in the military.

The mother and son in the painting were actually mother and son: Sarah (often referred to as Saara) Hagelberg and her son Richard, a dairy farm owner in Arlington, Vermont, and the milkman from Rockwell. Richard had spent the previous five years in the 9th Army Air Corps; according to the blog Only in Republic of Amherst, it carried out “65 treacherous daytime bombing missions over Europe, including D-Day.”

Richard had just returned home when Rockwell asked him to pose for the play. He and his mother initially refused and did not give in until the artist offered them $ 15 each, which was not a small amount of money at the time. Legend has it that Rockwell gifted the painting to Richard after it was published, as per his usual custom, but the soldier refused. In less than two years it was sold to Tisdale.

As it is about Rockwell, the creator of immortal moments, the work is no less resonant today than it was 76 years ago. It appears in countless Rockwell books and collections, among which Tell stories, a collection of essays accompanying an exhibition of Rockwells owned by filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

“Rockwell has created numerous images depicting the war as an experience on the home front – by workers, children, parents and loved ones awaiting the return of the soldiers,” film critic Todd McCarthy wrote in Tell stories. “With the quartet ‘Freedom’, the simplest, the most eloquent and the most moving of them are its various representations of return to the sources. He had worked in this vein at the end of World War I, albeit in a relatively obvious way. But his 1945 series on World War II – including Back to home, Marine reunion and Thanksgiving: mother and son peeling potatoes – were all so fleshy and piercing that they could have been scenes from movies.

“In their emotional impact, they anticipated the upsetting moment when Al Stephenson (played by Fredric March) quietly returns to his family after years of war in William Wyler’s Oscar-winning film. The best years of our life (1946). ”

LaBrack remembers seeing the painting himself for the first time, on a trip to the Rockwell Museum. He too was shocked at the sight of the soldier who survived, returned home and was only too happy to peel potatoes with the mother who was luckier than most.

“Just an amazing painting,” says LaBrack. “Very, very touching.”

The post is sad to see it go, but also knows it’s time to let someone else own it after all these decades. And, now: a reproduction is now hanging in the hallway.