This beautiful reproduction poster has been re-mastered from Norman Rockwell’s iconic illustration of Rosie the Riveter, for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, on Memorial Day, May 29, 1943. This hard-to-find image is from Rockwell’s uncropped painting before the Saturday Evening Post masthead and text were placed on the artwork.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" format is an excellent image size that looks great as a stand-alone piece of art, or as a grouped visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom framing, and a wide variety of 13"x19" frames are readily available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or business!
HISTORY OF ROSIE THE RIVETER
Norman Rockwell's image of "Rosie the Riveter" received mass distribution on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Memorial Day, May 29, 1943. Rockwell's illustration features a brawny woman taking her lunch break with a rivet gun on her lap. Her lunch box reads "Rosie"; viewers quickly recognized that to be "Rosie the Riveter" from the familiar song.
Rockwell, America's best-known popular illustrator of the day, based the pose of his 'Rosie' on that of Michelangelo's 1509 painting Prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Rosie is holding a ham sandwich in her left hand, and her blue overalls are adorned with badges and buttons: a Red Cross blood donor button, a white "V for Victory" button, a Blue Star Mothers pin, an Army-Navy E Service production award pin, two bronze civilian service awards, and her personal identity badge.
Rockwell's model was a Vermont resident, 19-year-old Mary Doyle, who was a telephone operator near where Rockwell lived, not a riveter. Rockwell painted his "Rosie" as a larger woman than his model, and he later phoned to apologize. In a post interview, Mary explained that she was actually holding a sandwich while posing for the poster and that the rivet-gun she was holding was fake, she did have a white handkerchief in her pocket like the picture depicts. The Post's cover image proved hugely popular, and the magazine loaned it to the United States Department of the Treasury for the duration of the war, for use in war bond drives.
After the war, the Rockwell "Rosie" was seen less and less because of a general policy of vigorous copyright protection by the Rockwell estate. In 2002, the original painting sold at Sotheby's for nearly $5 million. In June 2009 the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas acquired Norman Rockwell's iconic Rosie the Riveter painting for its permanent collection from a private collector.
In late 1942, Doyle posed twice for Rockwell's photographer, Gene Pelham, as Rockwell preferred to work from still images rather than live models. The first photo was not suitable, because she wore a blouse rather than a blue work shirt. In total, she was paid $10 for her modeling work (equivalent to $150 in 2020). In 1949 she married Robert J. Keefe to become Mary Doyle Keefe. The Keefes were invited and present in 2002 when the Rockwell painting was sold at Sotheby's.
In an interview in 2014, Keefe said that she had no idea what impact the painting would have. "I didn't expect anything like this, but as the years went on, I realized that the painting was famous," she said. Keefe died on April 21, 2015, in Connecticut at the age of 92.
