A beloved Norman Rockwell painting that was discovered behind a false wall in a Vermont home last spring sold yesterday at Sotheby’s for $15.4 million, a record price for the artist at auction.

The image, “Breaking Home Ties,” reproduced on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on Sept. 25, 1954, was voted the second-most popular cover in the magazine’s history. (No. 1 was “Saying Grace,” the Nov. 24, 1951 cover, also by Rockwell.)

The previous auction record for a Rockwell was $9.2 million at Sotheby’s in May for “Homecoming Marine.”

It was not the only record of the day. “Hotel Window,” a 1955 painting by Edward Hopper owned by the actor Steve Martin, which depicts a woman sitting in an empty hotel lobby, brought $26.8 million, surpassing the artist’s previous auction price record of $2.4 million at Sotheby’s in 1990 for “South Truro Church.”