Was the White House used to steal a series of Norman Rockwell illustrations?
That’s the central argument in a thorny new lawsuit, which alleges that descendants of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime press secretary loaned a set of four Rockwells to the White House in an effort to cover up the ownership of works of art, according to a report by the the wall street journal. (The White House has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)
Rockwell created the sketches and watercolors while visiting the presidential residence in 1943. The series, titled “You want to see the presidentdepicts various Americans—soldiers, senators, a Miss America pageant winner—waiting in the Executive Wing for a face-to-face moment with Roosevelt. They ran together in the November 13, 1943 issue of Saturday night post.
After completing the illustrations, the artist gifted them to FDR’s publicist, Stephen Early, who also appeared in one of the sketches.
For decades and seven presidential administrations, Rockwell’s coins hung in the White House. But it was news to the heirs of the publicist’s son, Thomas Early, who spotted the artwork on a West Wing hallway wall while watching a 2017 TV interview with the then President Donald Trump.
Suspecting that his nephew, William Elam III, had lent the illustrations without the family’s permission, Early requested that they be removed from the walls of the White House. When Early died in 2020, the artwork was still on view at the residence.
It was only last year that the White House quietly retired the Rockwells, replacing them with several photographic portraits of President Joe Biden, policy reported at the time. But, once removed, the “You want to see the president” artwork was returned to Elam, not Early’s direct parents.
An illustration from Norman Rockwell’s 1943 series, You want to see the president. Courtesy of the United States District Court for Eastern Virginia.
Now, a contentious legal debate over the ownership of the coins has pitted the various family members against each other.
In February, Elam filed a lawsuit in the Virginia District Court alleging he was entitled to sole ownership of Rockwell’s works. The file explained that Stephen Early, the former press secretary, had given them to his daughter, Helen Early Elam, in 1949, and that she in turn had given them to her son, William Elam III, who had loaned them. at the White House in July 1978. .
Elam III asks the court to give him definitive ownership of the illustrations.
But this week, Thomas Early’s sister and sons filed a counterclaim against Elam III, in which they argued that Helen Elam only owned a third interest in Rockwell’s sketches and therefore could not. legally pass it on to his son.
The counterclaim further alleged that “William Elam took the Rockwells to the White House to conceal his removal of the artwork from his grandmother’s house and to hide the Rockwells for a significant period of time to ‘bleach’ or ‘wash “ownership of the artwork, for the purpose of obtaining sole ownership.”
Early’s heirs are also seeking ownership of Rockwell’s artwork, along with $350,000 in punitive damages.
We don’t know how Early’s heirs arrived at this figure, although it does not necessarily reflect the value of the works of art.
Rockwell’s paintings have consistently fetched seven and eight figures at auction in recent years, according to Artnet’s price database, but works on paper have not been as popular with the market. The record price for one of the artist’s paper pieces is $854,500 for a study for his 1964 oil, The problem we all live withdepicting Ruby Bridges entering her newly desegregated primary school, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2010.
Lawyers for Elam III and Early’s heirs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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