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Comparing the two, experts mused that the painting’s colors seemed oddly washed out. They conjectured that a zealous conservator had overcleaned the work, which depicts a fresh-faced boy about to leave home for the first time, posed with his dog and his craggy-faced father on the running board of an old truck.

The painting’s provenance was undisputed: Don Trachte, known as the cartoonist who took over the Sunday edition of the comic strip “Henry” in the 1940’s, bought the painting from Rockwell for $900 in 1960. It became his prized possession.

So prized, it seems, that when Mr. Trachte and his wife, Elizabeth, jointly filed for divorce more than a decade later, the cartoonist cooked up a ruse, presumably to ensure keeping the treasure himself, hiding the original in a secret niche behind a wall in his house in Sandgate, Vt.

What he and his wife subsequently divvied up — the Rockwell and seven other paintings by other local artists — were therefore copies, presumably made, their children say, by Mr. Trachte himself.

Last month — more than three decades after the divorce, and nearly a year after Mr. Trachte’s death — his son Dave, 54, noticed a strange gap in a wood-paneled wall in his father’s house. When he and his brother Don Jr., 59, gave it a shove, the wall suddenly slid open, revealing the Rockwell and the other canvases hanging on a wall in the hidden compartment.

“Every divorce is always a little messy,” conceded Don Jr. in an interview.

[…]

Mr. Trachte’s ex-wife, Elizabeth Markey, now 98, is apparently unfazed. When her eldest son gave her the news, he said, her response was a wry, “Doesn’t surprise me.”