Myth of Rosie the Riveter - On the Homefront - WW2 > .
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 and beneath her
penny loafer a copy of
Adolf Hitler's manifesto,
Mein Kampf. 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 never saw Hitler's copy of
Mein Kampf, and 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 $148 in 2019). 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.
