NEW YORK, N.Y.- On May 22, 2002 Sotheby's in New York will offer for sale Rosie the Riveter, Norman Rockwell's iconic work that galvanized wartime America. As the centerpiece of the blockbuster exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York: Norman Rockwell, Pictures for the American People, which closed on March 3rd, Rosie the Riveter is a personification of the role of American women during World War II and an enduring image of American popular culture. It is estimated to sell for $3/5 million.



Following the United States' entry into World War II in 1941, millions of American women answered the government's call to enter the workforce and fill traditionally male jobs left vacant by those who had gone off to fight. Women's labor was urgently needed to help fill shortages created by the expanded wartime economy, especially in the production of military hardware. These women - who often wore hardhats and overalls and operated heavy machinery - represented a radical departure from the traditional American feminine ideal of housewife and mother. In 1942, a popular song about a patriotic female defense worker named Rosie the Riveter provided the name that became synonymous with this new kind of American woman. Painted for the cover of the 29th May, 1943 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter gave visual form to this phenomenon. Rockwell portrayed Rosie as a monumental figure clad in overalls and a workshirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal her powerful, muscular arms. She is shown pausing for lunch, with a riveting machine and a tin lunch box balanced on her substantial lap, her visor and goggles pushed back on her head and a ham sandwich clasped in her hand. Despite her massive bulk, sturdy work clothes and the smudges on her arms and cheeks, Rosie's painted fingernails, lipstick and the tidy arrangement of her bright red curls wittily convey her underlying femininity. Pausing between bites, she gazes into the distance with a detached air of supreme self-assurance, while casually crushing a tattered copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf under her sizeable feet. As many Post readers quickly observed, Rockwell found the source for Rosie's monumental dignity and classical enthronement in Michelangelo's depiction of the prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling and found the model for Rosie in Mary Keefe, a nineteen year old telephone operator in Arlington, Vermont.



Mrs. Keefe recalls meeting Mary Rockwell, the artist's wife, when she came in to pay her telephone bill. Like many other residents of the small town, Mary eventually became acquainted with the artist and readily accepted when Rockwell called and asked her to pose. Mrs. Keefe remembers arriving at the studio, where Rockwell had assembled her costume, which originally included a white shirt and saddle shoes. She sat for several photographs (all of which were destroyed when Rockwell's studio burned to the ground during the summer of 1943), but had to return for a second session with the artist when he decided he wanted Rosie to be wearing a blue shirt and penny loafers. Mrs. Keefe recalled seeing the final composition for the first time during a trip to a newsstand in Bennington, Vermont, where she happened to see a poster advertising the May 29, 1943 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. She remembers being rather shocked by Rockwell's transformation of her slim figure into Rosie's overly muscular physique, but quickly adds that the artist later called her to apologize for his exaggerated enlargement of her size.



American audiences were generally amused and delighted by the connection between Rosie and Isaiah, which was first revealed to the general public when the Kansas City Star ran images of Rockwell's Rosie and Michelangelo's Isaiah side by side. Just as Isaiah was called by God to convert the wicked from their sinful ways and trample evildoers under foot, so Rockwell's Rosie tramples Hitler under her all-American penny loafer. Many of Rockwell's best World War II paintings combine this playful, slightly irreverent humor with a more serious, patriotic message. During a critical period of the war, Rosie the Riveter reminded Americans, with a message that still resonates today, of the need for all to do their part in the war effort and to take pride in the work involved. With strong, confident and dedicated women like Rosie at the helm, Rockwell seems to reassure his viewers that Adolf Hitler doesn't stand a chance. The work is estimated to sell for $3/5 million in Sotheby's American Paintings sale this spring.