It was Normans fault, after attending a hunting and fishing lecture at the high school, stopped by the studio. As he left, he leaned over to switch off the fluorescent light, and ashes must have dropped from his pipe onto a cushion on the window seat. About 1:15 in the morning, son Tom discovered the fire, tried to call the fire department but the phone was dead. The phone wires came across the river and through the studio. Tom and his brothers Jerry and Peter were all down with the measles at the time. They sent the hired hand (Mr. Wheaton) to the neighbor’s house about half mile up the road to call the fire department.

By the time the volunteer firemen reached Norman’s studio, they were unable to save anything. 32 original paintings destroyed. “Well, there goes my life’s work, all my antiques, my favorite covers and illustrations which I’d kept over the years, my costumes, my collections of old guns, animal skulls, Howard Pyle prints, my paints, brushes, easel, my file of clippings—everything,” said Norman, he was 49 years old. He made a sketch of the event called My Studio Burns for the Post. 

From: "My Adventures As An Illustrator" by Norman Rockwell. Chapter XVI

I Rise from the Ashes

"Then, still recovering from the Four Freedoms, I painted a Boy Scout calendar, shipping it off to Brown and Bigelow in St. Paul, Minnesota, late one afternoon. And that night my studio burned to the ground. It was my own fault. Schaef and I had attended a hunting and fishing lecture given that evening at the high school by a mutual friend, Lee Wulff. Afterward the three of us had returned to my studio and talked until about half past eleven. As we left, I leaned over to switch off the fluorescent light, and ashes must have dropped from my pipe onto the cushion on the window seat, because the next thing I knew it was one-thirty in the morning and my son Tom was banging on the bedroom door and yelling, "Pop, the studios on fire!"

I looked out the window. A storm of flame crackled red and molten gold in the interior of the studio and rolled in a thundering cloud of sparks and smoke through the roof. The leaves of the apple tree by the driveway glinted against the surrounding darkness.

Pulling on a pair of pants and buttoning my shirt, I ran downstairs and tried the phone. Dead. The wires came across the river and through the studio. Mr. Wheaton, our hired man, rushed out of his room...and I dispatched him in the car to Walt Squires' house, a half mile up the road, to call the fire department. Then I ran outside to see if anything could be saved.

But it was no use; I couldn't get within thirty feet of the studio. After a minute the .22 and shotgun shells I'd kept in a drawer began to explode..."

"I didn't feel sad at all. Maybe I was in a state of shock. I was a bit troubled by the loss of all my pipes, but later that morning as I was poking about the ruins, several of the men in town arrived, bringing me some new pipes"