The Norman Rockwell self-portrait “Beyond the Easel” was one of five Rockwells and among 25 works in the Boy Scouts of America art collection that was sold in an auction Friday. Money raised from the auction will benefit BSA sexual abuse survivors.

More than $3.7 million was raised Friday in the first of several auctions to sell the Boy Scouts of America art collection, which had been housed at Medici Museum of Art in Howland from 2020 until earlier this year.

The 25 works sold Friday by Heritage Auctions in Dallas included five of the 65 Norman Rockwell pieces in the collection.

Those five works were responsible for 75% of the $3,715,500 and generated combined bids of $2.8 million from in-person, telephone and online bidders (not including the additional 25% buyer’s premium paid to the auction house).

The oil-on-canvas Rockwell painting “To Keep Myself Physically Strong,” which was used on a 1964 Boy Scouts of America Calendar and as Boy’s Life cover that same year, attracted the highest sale price at $900,000 ($1.125 million with buyer’s premium). “Homecoming” sold for $625,000, “Boy and Dogs, New Puppies” (the only Rockwell with no Boy Scout connection) sold for $625,000 and the self-portrait “Behind the Easel” received a top bid of $460,000. A charcoal drawing that was a study for one of Rockwell’s paintings sold for $140,000.

The sale also included works by renowned illustrators Joseph Christian Leyendecker and Dean Cornwell as well as Joseph Csatari, who succeeded Rockwell as the BSA’s principal artist.

As high as those numbers may sound to the average person, the prices paid Friday were lower than the appraisals done before Medici became custodians of the collection in 2020, according to Medici Executive Director Katelyn Amendolara-Russo.

With a couple of exceptions, “All of the Rockwells were appraised at least at one to $1.5 million,” she said. “‘Beyond the Easel,’ one of his last paintings for the Boy Scouts, that was appraised at a million and went for half that ($460,000).”

William Mullane, who hung the Rockwell exhibition at Medici and is an art collector himself, said even though Heritage Auctions only put a small fraction of the BSA’s Rockwells on the market, collectors know the rest of the paintings will be sold in the next few years.

“When you put this many on the market, even if you don’t put them all up at once but you know they’re coming, you can just wait,” Mullane said.

Mullane didn’t believe the circumstances of the auction — the BSA was ordered to liquidate its art collection and other assets to compensate more than 64,000 former Scouts who have filed claims as abuse survivors — impacted the prices. Friday’s auction also included works by 20th-century American artists that weren’t part of the BSA collection. Many of those pieces sold below their pre-auction estimates, and a few failed to meet their reserve price. Mullane said that’s been the trend at art auctions for the last four or five months.

Collectors interested in Boy Scout art won’t be deterred by the circumstances that forced the sale, Mullane said, and he believes some of the works that haven’t been sold yet, such as the 1932 Rockwell painting “A Scout Is Loyal” with George Washington, will far surpass the prices paid Friday.

Heritage Auctions came to Medici in September to catalog and crate BSA collection of more than 400 artworks. Amendolara-Russo said she was told there will be quarterly auctions held by HA until the entire collection is sold. She was pleased the first auction happened as quickly as it did, even if it meant Labor Day weekend in Howland was the last chance anyone will ever see all of those Rockwells in one place at the same time.

“I’m actually happy to see that the victims are going to get compensated much sooner than anticipated,” she said. “But it was a wonderful experience having them at Medici and getting to see all the details up close, and now to see them at auction. It was a good feeling. I wasn’t sad.”