Long-Lost Norman Rockwell to come to Auction

On October 25, 2025, as part of their Autumn Fine Arts & Objects Auction, Shapiro Auctions will offer Norman Rockwell’s 1923 painting, The Sampler, which appeared on the cover of the March 1, 1924 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. The Sampler, a 28 x 22 inch oil on canvas, will be estimated at $200,000 -300,000.

Capturing the transition from girlhood to womanhood, from childhood to adulthood, with a timelessness that transcends the moment it depicts in American history, Rockwell’s The Sampler is a key work, one that marks a turning point in the artist’s oeuvre and career. The painting will take its place alongside masterful Post covers such as Doctor and the Doll, Breaking Home Ties, and The Runaway.

The rediscovery of The Sampler is sure to be a major event in American art history.

In June, 1923, Rockwell, searching for fresh ideas and new models, visited Trinity Place School in New Rochelle, NY, not far from his own home and studio. There he saw Carolina A. Ciancio, one of that year’s graduates. He hired her on the spot.

A fresh idea was born when Rockwell saw a cross-stitch sampler that had been made by “Phoebe Ann Small, 15 yrs” a hundred years earlier, a sampler that exists to this day, though how the artist came to see it is a mystery that may never be solved.

Listed as “Whereabouts unknown” in Laurie Norton Moffat’s Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue, Rockwell, in fact, gave the The Sampler to Ciancio after the Post was finished with it. The painting has remained in her family to the present day. Rockwell also corresponded with Ciancio, addressing her as “Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter” at least until the late 1960’s.

Norman Rockwell was restless in 1923. That fall, he would take a solo trip to Europe. He took in exhibitions of modernist art, which he followed and admired throughout his career. On his return, he tried his hand at abstraction, but he ultimately determined that he would stick to what he knew best and approach illustration as fine art.

Knowing that Rockwell had Europe on his mind, one can see why Ciancio caught his eye. In photographs as well as in the painting, she combines old world beauty and young republic American freshness. Old and new. Rockwell was tuned in to his times. The 1920’s saw challenges to traditional notions of femininity and gender expectations in America. Women had won the right to vote. The flapper era’s rejection of Victorian lady-like dress and manner was in full swing. This dichotomy between 1924 and 1824 leads us to the dress in the painting, a dress so beautifully painted that reproductions of the Post cover alone made—and continue to make—an impact on popular culture. As recently as 1989, the Danbury Mint marketed a porcelain doll, named, fittingly, “The Sampler,” that was inspired by Rockwell’s Post cover.

Rockwell almost certainly rented the dress from Charles Chrisdie & Company, which was, as he described it in his autobiography, Norman Rockwell: My Adventures as an Illustrator, “a dilapidated four-story building set among a lot of dingy warehouses and hole-in-the-wall bars… If I wanted a lady’s costume I’d go to the second floor.” Rockwell would be made to wait to see Gussie, who ran the women’s department and knew he was an artist—meaning he had little money to spend. As Rockwell writes, “Sometimes there’d be a night-club chorus waiting to be fitted, some of the girls standing by the table, some perched on the tier of drawers, some curled gracefully…” What would the chorus girls and flappers of 1924 have made of the dress in The Sampler and of Rockwell’s depiction of a teenager a hundred years earlier? What did Carolina Ciancio think? What would the young women of 2025 make of their sisters from 1924 and 1824?

Carolina Ciancio would feature in at least four Rockwell paintings: The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, which appeared on the cover of the July 28, 1923 issue of The Literary Digest; Bobbing for Apples, an advertisement for Valspar paints; The Model, which appeared on the cover of the May 3, 1924 issue of The Saturday Evening Post; and The Sampler.

Rockwell’s The Sampler can be viewed in person at Shapiro Auctions location in Bedford Hills, New York.

Shapiro Auctions will be accepting quality consignments for the Autumn Fine Arts & Objects Auction until September 30. The catalogue will be available in early October.

For more information on The Sampler, or to inquire about consigning works, please visit www.shapiroauctions.com, or contact Shapiro Auctions at (212) 717-7500.