At the time of his death in 1978, Normal Rockwell's estate was worth $6.8 million. That's about $26 million in today's dollars. After adjusting for inflation, he owned $5 million worth of stock, $400,000 worth of real estate and $16 million worth of miscellaneous other assets that he transferred to family members through trusts. At the time of his death, he was earning around $1 million per year in royalties.

His Will – What He Left Behind

Rockwell’s will documents that he died a wealthy man. Most of his assets were put trusts to avoid taxes (Transfers During Life to Others).

Table 1. – Assets in Rockwell’s Will

Rockwell’s wife and three sons were the primary beneficiaries of his estate. As Table 2 indicates, they received $2.2 million dollars. (Table 2)

Table 2. – Estate Beneficiaries

At his death, an estimate was made of projected royalties for the 1979 to 1984 period

Table 3. – Projected Royalties

Work Activities

Records show that Rockwell’s income earning years covered more than 6 decades (1916 – 1978). While Rockwell’s covers for the Post “put him on the map”, he did far more than Post covers

Table 4. – Rockwell’s Work, By Category

Covers

Earnings data by date on 85 of his Post covers used to calculate the average Post cover payment he received by decade. They do provide a “ball park” approximation.

The results are shown in Table 5. His cover earnings appear to have peaked in the 1940 decade.

Table 5. – Estimated Cover Earnings

In 1963, Rockwell’s cover price was reduced from $5,000 to $3,000. It is not altogether clear why this happened. Times were changing, and the Post was following the trend to more photographs and fewer illustrations. And it appears that the personal relationship Rockwell had with the magazine’s earlier art editors no longer existed. This is represented in the somewhat terse letters between Rockwell and the last Post art editor he dealt with (Asker Jervild). Rockwell’s last cover was sold to the Post in 1963. At that time, the Post was having business problems, but the magazine held on until 1969 when it collapsed (1969), largely the result of a landmark defamation suit costing Curtis more than $3 million in damages.

Advertising/Commercial Art Income

842 ads – a lot! Table 6 lists the number of ads per decade. These are huge numbers, especially in the early decades when he was not all that well known. Once he became well-known, many of his ads were generated by advertising firms including Benton & Bowles, J. Walter Thompson, and Gray and Rogers.

Table 6. – Rockwell Ads by Decade

Table 7 lists data on Rockwell’s ad sources by industry. His largest individual clients were – Franklin Mint (91) followed by MassMutual (83), Boy Scouts (55), Schenley (49), and PanAm (35).

Table 7. – Largest Ad Sources by Industry

Rockwell claimed that other clients paid him twice as much (letter to Post on Jan. 15, 1956 when he was getting $3,500 for covers – “everything else, $7,000”). “Twice as much” is probably a bit of an exaggeration, so assuming he got 75% more from ads to private firms than for Post covers. Rockwell also did ads for various government and non-profit organizations assumingly he got paid the same as Post covers for government work, and two thirds as much Post covers for non-profit ads. These are only intended as rough approximations.

The results are presented in Table 8. His best years for ads were the ‘40s decade where he received more than $150,000 per year. 

Table 8. – Estimated Ad/Commercial Art Income

Portraits

On November 7, 1972, Rockwell was paid $10,000 for two portraits (the McGoverns and Nixons). At that time, $5,000 was what he was getting paid for covers. So for portrait earnings estimates, assumeingly he received the same amount for portraits as he did for covers

Table 9. – Estimated Portrait Earnings

Book and Story Illustrations

As Table 4 suggested, Rockwell was a prolific book (503) and story (746) illustrator. Assumingly he got paid one-third of what he got paid for covers for both. In addition to getting paid for each illustration on delivery, Rockwell received royalty income on many of them as well.

Table 10. – Estimated Book and Story Illustration Earnings

Income Totals

Table 11 presents Rockwell’s estimated earnings from all his activities. An extremely hard and productive worker, he made a lot of money. From the ‘40s through the ‘60s, his average annual earnings exceeded $1.35 million dollars.

Table 11. – Rockwell’s Earnings From All Activities

While Rockwell is best known for his Post covers, it appears that over 60% of his income came from his commercial ad work. 18% of his income came from portraits. And while he was best known for his Post covers, I estimate he earned only 12% of his income from covers.   

Expenses/Donations

Norman was very generous – a real philanthropist. He had an accountant that kept close tabs on his income and expenses. Selecting two years (1963 and 1964) and collected data from his ledgers for those years on both expenses and donations

Table 12. – Rockwell’s Business Expenses

Rockwell’s expenses do not appear to be abnormally high for a small businessman. On being a philanthropist, Rockwell’s charitable donations were $874 and $1,012 in 1963 and 1964 respectively.

Limiting Factors – How Rockwell Could Have Made More

Rockwell’s earnings were limited by the agreements he entered into with clients. At the Post, his cover payments started at $75, went to $5,000 and then back to $3,000.  But in Rockwell’s dealings with the Post, there was far more at stake than what he got paid for the covers. Most critical were who got the painting royalties and who ended up owning the paintings. These critical issues were addressed in correspondence between Rockwell’s lawyer (John Donna) and of the art director (Kenneth Stuart) of the Saturday Evening Post. In a letter dated September 9, 1955 to Donne, Stuart said: “Our company [Curtis Publishing] owns all rights to Norman’s paintings, including the ownership of the originals….”

Stuart went on to say “We have for years…returned a great portion of the originals to the artists particularly where we did not need them for decoration or for promotional purposes.” In actual fact, the Post did not return all the pictures they did not need for “decoration” or “promotional purposes”. They auctioned off some of them. The evidence of this comes from a letter from Mrs. Alexander Spivak to Rockwell dated May 26, 1964 in which she said she had purchased the original of “Cellist with Little Girl Dancing” cover (February 3, 1923) at auction. Sadly, a lack of clarity on what pictures the Rockwell family legitimately owns continues to this day.