Breaking Home Ties is a painting by American illustrator Norman Rockwell, created for the September 25, 1954, cover of The Saturday Evening Post. The picture represents a father and son waiting for a train that will take the young man to the state university. The painting, considered by experts to be one of Rockwell's masterworks, is also one of the most widely reproduced, and was voted the second-most popular image in Post history.
The details of the picture, as with most of Rockwell's works, tell a story. In this case a story of endings and beginnings, as a boy from New Mexico leaves home for the first time. The young man, his dog and his father, sit on the running board of the family's stake-sided farm truck. The ticket protruding from the son's pocket, and the single rail visible at the lower corner of the painting, by which the trio sit, suggest that they are at a whistle stop waiting for the train. (1)