These Norman Rockwell sketches once hung in the White House. On Friday, they’re up for auction

In a high-stakes bid to reclaim a significant piece of White House history, the White House Historical Association has entered the competition for four Norman Rockwell sketches that once adorned the West Wing’s walls for more than four decades.

The sketches, titled “So You Want to See the President!” depict everyday Americans waiting in the White House lobby to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s. Created in 1943 and published in the Saturday Evening Post during World War II, the series showcases journalists, military officers, and even a Miss America Pageant winner among those seated on plush red chairs in the West Wing lobby.

“They’re so different from any of the other art that was exhibited in the West Wing,” said Anita McBride, a board member of the White House Historical Association. McBride, who worked in the Reagan administration in 1981, recalled the drawings as a “focal point” during staff-led tours. “People just loved seeing the wide array and depiction of Americans that have access to their president.”

The collection carries particular historical significance as Rockwell’s only known series of four interrelated paintings conceived to tell a story. Matthew Costello, the association’s chief education officer, noted their symbolic importance: “In a way, it sort of illustrates how FDR always talked about the ‘arsenal of democracy’ and what made the United States unique.”

The sketches have traveled a complicated path to the auction block. Rockwell originally gifted them to Stephen Early, Roosevelt’s longtime press secretary, who appears in one drawing smoking a pipe surrounded by reporters. A family member returned them to the White House in 1978, where they remained on display for decades, often hanging in a hallway near the press offices close to the Oval Office.

A family ownership dispute erupted in 2017 when Thomas Early, son of the former press secretary, spotted the sketches during a televised interview with then-President Donald Trump. William Elam III, Stephen Early’s grandson, claimed the drawings had been gifted to his mother before her father’s death and subsequently passed to him. The sketches had been loaned to the White House under an agreement requiring their return upon request.

After a legal battle, a federal appeals court ruled in Elam’s favor this May, upholding a lower court’s decision. The White House returned the drawings in 2022, and Elam has now put them up for auction through Dallas-based Heritage Auctions.

Competition for the sketches will be fierce. With a starting bid of $2.5 million and an estimated final selling price between $4 million and $6 million, the nonprofit White House Historical Association faces significant financial hurdles. The organization receives no government funding, relying primarily on private donations and merchandise sales, including its popular annual Christmas ornament.

The association has not disclosed its maximum bid, but its previous record art purchase was $1.5 million for Jacob Lawrence’s “The Builders” in 2007, which now hangs in the White House Green Room.

“We try hard to bring them back,” McBride said of historically significant White House artifacts that become available on the market. The association, founded in 1961 by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, maintains its commitment to preserving the museum quality of the White House interior and educating the public about its history.

The auction is scheduled for Friday, with Heritage Auctions reporting that clients are “ready and waiting to compete for this American icon.” Whether the White House Historical Association prevails remains to be seen, but their participation underscores the significant cultural and historical value of these rare Rockwell works that once helped Americans visualize the accessibility of their government during one of the nation’s most challenging periods.