$5m Hidden Art

'Breaking Home Ties', which hangs at the Norman Rockwell Museum is one of the American artist's best-known and most popular works, worth an estimated $5m on the art market. Or it would be, if Rockwell had actually painted it. In fact, the museum's prized art exhibit has been exposed as a fake, almost certainly created by the cartoonist Don Trachte, who bought the original art from Rockwell in 1960 for a mere $900. Trachte died in 2005, but his sons discovered the original painting hidden in a secret compartment behind the walls of their father's house. It had lain there undisturbed, along with seven other valuable art works by contemporary artists, for the best part of 35 years. Why did Trachte forge a set of paintings that he already owned? It is most likely that he painted the fakes in the 1970s, before or during his divorce from his wife Elizabeth. For the full story - click the title Irish Art