To get some idea of just how important ownership of paintings is for the artist and their heirs, consider the prices Rockwell’s paintings got at auction.

 As of 2013, of his more than 4,000 art works, 926 of them have gone to auction since his death. Of that number, 172 did not sell. 134 items were auctioned more than once. Total auction revenues(as of 2013) have been $254,752,140.

Norman Rockwell works that have been auctioned off ($195,000 or more)

In the 1940’s before the studio fire, Rockwell discarded some of his own original oils and sketches. He would send a painting to the Saturday Evening Post to be used for a cover and, when it was returned, he would rip the canvas off the frame, toss it away and stretch a new piece of canvas onto the frame for the next painting. When a fan wrote to him, asking if she could buy some of his original work, he called her, “the crazy woman from Chicago” and charged her $100 a piece for seven canvasses.

The “crazy woman’s” family sold the paintings in the 1990s for $17 million.